> if the transaction could not go through, it remains pending for 3-ish days while Google retries internally.
To be clear, the transaction isn't retried. The backend keeps trying to fetch the transaction status until it gets a definitive success/failure from the PSP/issuer.
I agree with your comment though; payments is a frustrating UX if the backend isn't nearly 100% reliable.
UPI in particularly has a dozen or so moving parts in the OLTP path each of which are 90-95% available at best.
From the insiders, I know that issuing banks aren't incentivised to invest in their UPI stack to make them highly available or reliable. That's because government has banned interchange fee on UPI transactions and it wants issuers to absorb the cost of maintaining their UPI stack. So the issuers let that tech stack languish doing their absolute minimum to keep it running.
This is a great example of forcing a party to participate in a transaction and at the same time not pay them to maintain the system. It ends up being counterproductive in terms of frustrating UX and more.
To be clear, the transaction isn't retried. The backend keeps trying to fetch the transaction status until it gets a definitive success/failure from the PSP/issuer.
I agree with your comment though; payments is a frustrating UX if the backend isn't nearly 100% reliable.
UPI in particularly has a dozen or so moving parts in the OLTP path each of which are 90-95% available at best.
From the insiders, I know that issuing banks aren't incentivised to invest in their UPI stack to make them highly available or reliable. That's because government has banned interchange fee on UPI transactions and it wants issuers to absorb the cost of maintaining their UPI stack. So the issuers let that tech stack languish doing their absolute minimum to keep it running.
This is a great example of forcing a party to participate in a transaction and at the same time not pay them to maintain the system. It ends up being counterproductive in terms of frustrating UX and more.