How should our checkout update Cashfree Payments flows to enforce new UPI per-transaction and daily caps effective September 15, 2025?

Rollback plan

• Implement a multi-gateway architecture
• To avoid a total payment outage, your system should be able to route transactions through multiple gateways. If you are migrating from an existing gateway, keep that gateway fully operational as a fallback option, using a smart routing mechanism.
• Define clear rollback triggers
• Establish specific, measurable thresholds that, if crossed, automatically or manually trigger a rollback to the previous payment system.

Communications plan
The communications plan should be transparent, timely, and empathetic. Pre-drafted messages and a clear escalation path will save critical time during an incident.

• Internal communications
• Automated alerts: Set up an alert system (e.g., Slack, email) to notify key internal teams immediately when a rollback is triggered.
• Incident team: Define an incident response team including a communications manager, technical lead, and customer support lead.
• Internal status page: Maintain an internal status page to keep all employees informed of the incident status without distracting the technical team.
• External communications
• Acknowledge the issue: If the performance regression significantly affects customers, use multiple channels to acknowledge the problem quickly.
• Focus on customer impact: Describe issues in a way that customers understand, for example, ""Some customers are experiencing issues with payments"" rather than ""our Paytm integration is down"".
• Suggest alternatives: If your multi-gateway setup is working, you can guide users to an alternative action, such as trying a different payment method like a credit card or another UPI provider.
• Provide regular updates: Even if there is no new information, provide consistent updates to show customers that the issue is being actively worked on.

To restrict new Google Pay features to a pilot group, you need to use a combination of feature flags in your codebase and policy controls managed through your internal systems and potentially within the Google Pay Console. This provides precise control over feature access for the pilot group and establishes necessary guardrails to minimize risk.

To prove that a PhonePe update improved team productivity without increasing risk, you need to track and analyze a balanced set of key performance indicators (KPIs) before and after the change. The best approach combines developer and support-centric productivity metrics with critical business and security risk metrics.

Productivity KPIs
These metrics demonstrate that the team is able to accomplish more efficiently after the update.

For the engineering team

• Reduced lead time for changes: Measure the average time it takes for a code change related to PhonePe to go from committo deployed.A decrease in this metric indicates a simpler and more efficient integration and release process.
• Reduced time to resolution (MTTR) for PhonePe-related incidents: If the update provides better logging, APIs, or tools, the time it takes to resolve issues should decrease. This can be tracked for both development and support incidents.
• Increased deployment frequency: A higher frequency of deployments for PhonePe features suggests increased automation and a more agile delivery pipeline.

For the support team

• Reduced average ticket handling time: Track the average time it takes for a support agent to resolve a customer issue related to PhonePe transactions. If the new APIs provide more real-time data, this time should decrease.
• Increased first-call resolution rate: A higher rate indicates that support agents have the information and tools to resolve issues without escalation, pointing to improved efficiency.
• Reduction in manual interventions: Track the number of times support or ops teams need to manually reconcile a transaction or adjust a customer record related to PhonePe. A successful update should automate many of these tasks.

Risk KPIs

These metrics confirm that the improved productivity did not introduce new vulnerabilities or instability.
For the business

• Stable or reduced involuntary churn rate: Monitor the percentage of customers who stop using your service due to a failed payment. An effective update with improved dunning logic and retry mechanisms via the PhonePe platform should reduce this rate.
• Stable or improved payment success rate: Measure the percentage of payment attempts that are successfully processed. A high, stable success rate proves the underlying payment engine is reliable and not failing under the new update.
• Fraud and chargeback rate: A successful update must maintain or decrease the rate of fraudulent transactions and subsequent chargebacks. Closely monitor these metrics in the period following the update. 

For security

• Zero security incidents: The update should have a validated result of zero security incidents or breaches related to PhonePe data, tokens, or customer information.
• No increase in false positives from risk detection systems: False positives indicate that new system behaviors are being incorrectly flagged as risky. A stable rate indicates the new system is not interfering with fraud controls.
• Secure API endpoints: Regularly test and monitor the PhonePe API endpoints for vulnerabilities using automated and manual security testing to ensure no new weaknesses were introduced.

To train your support teams for handling tickets related to BHIM (Unified Payments Interface), focus on the most common issues that arise with UPI transactions, which often involve debits, failed transactions, and PIN problems. A structured training approach will help agents resolve issues efficiently and with empathy.

Critical windows to avoid

• September 28 – October 2 (Durga Puja and Dussehra): This is a period of exceptionally high transaction volumes across India due to the Durga Puja festivities and the culmination with Dussehra (Vijayadashami) on October 2. NPCI-powered systems will be under significant load during these days.
• October 20–22 (Diwali): This is the single busiest period for payments throughout the year.