India Panics As Paytm Faces Major Outage, And There’s No Explanation From the Company
India’s most widely used digital wallet Paytm faced some server issues late last evening, leaving several users stranded. Unable to access their funds or even log in to the platform, users flocked toTwitterand shared angry tweets with the hashtag #Paytmdown, whichmirrored the #DeletePaytm campaign that started last month. The hashtag soon started blowing up, with more and more users tagging Paytm and its customer support handle Paytm Care.
#paytmdowndon’t know how to have access back to my money…cant even trust digital money which assure 24*7 service .@paytm
— Dr.Shareeq Shezaan (@ShareeqShezaan)June 6, 2018
In response, Paytm Care tweeted back to the affected users, claiming that the platform was“facing some technical issues”.About two hours into the fiasco, Paytm finally fixed the issue and sent replies to a few users that said:
“We have fixed the issue. We would suggest you to retry once. Please do write us back for further support.”
While the issue may have been fixed for a majority of the users, a few users still seem to be having issues logging into their accounts and making payments.
#PaytmdownI had to pay my electricity bill but facing this problem.@Paytmpic.twitter.com/2aOqWZbLt7
— Ravi (@Ravi_Kumar_95)June 7, 2018
Users have been posting about the issue even after it was allegedly fixed, with the most recent tweet from earlier today.
Just been told by a senior@Paytmexec that they’re having a “server problem”. The app tells you there is a “Gateway timeout”. I wonder how much public money is frozen, how many transactions cannot be done, and why they don’t have a robust backup given how big they’ve become.
— Chaitanya Kalbag (@ChaitanyaKalbag)June 6, 2018
Other than the responses on Twitter, Paytm has not released any information regarding the recent outage or how many people were affected. Veteran journalist Chaitanya Kalbag who approached a ‘senior executive’ at Paytm was told that the company was facing a server problem.
Upon receiving an automated response from Paytm Care, claiming that the issue had been fixed, Kalbag replied saying:
“Sorry but this is not good enough. It took several hours and Paytm did not inform customers (via text messages?) that there was a problem. People were told to ‘recharge’ already flush wallets, or made to re-register. Transactions crashed midway. This doesn’t inspire confidence.”
Interestingly, just like Paytm didn’t care to alert customers about the outage, the company didn’t care to respond to Kalbag’s comment on the issue. After waiting for a while to receive any response from the company, Kalbag added,“Amazing non-responsiveness! And amazing public apathy! Interesting what a collusive monopoly can do.”
The company still hasn’t released an official statement regarding the recent outage and while customers continue to suffer, we don’t believe thatPaytmcares enough to respond.
Pranob Mehrotra
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