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Paytm outage, internet shutdown give India a reality check on its cashless dreams

Time for a reality check.

Manish Singh

on December 21, 2016

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In the aftermath of India invalidating much of its cash, many have resorted to mobile wallets to pay for their daily chores. But this week, Indians got a glimpse of how an Internet-reliant economy can fail them sometimes.

Users of Paytm, India’s most popular mobile wallet app, couldn’t pay for their food or cab Tuesday evening after the service suffered an outage.

The service, which has over 170 million registered users, couldn’t handle the sudden surge in transactions, a spokesperson told Mashable India. Paytm observed three times increase in the traffic on its platform, the company said.

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Some users are still facing issues while making transactions using their Paytm wallets. The company said it is routing the additional traffic to new servers and is working on installing additional capacity. Paytm said it is handling close to seven million transactions in a day, surpassing all the transactions made on credit and debit cards.

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People facing issues with Paytm app had the option to check out alternative services such as Ola Money and MobiKwik.

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However, people in the city of Imphal, the capital of the north eastern state of Manipur, have been left with no means to make any online transactions. The Indian government imposed a shutdown of internet services in the region after violence erupted over the economic blockade over the weekend.

This is not the first time when the government has shutdown internet services in parts of the country. The practice is routinely followed in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, which is at the core of dispute between India and neighboring Pakistan.

Internet services have also been shut down in cities in the western state of Gujarat during times of riots and protests as well as in the eastern state of Bihar during important exams.