Paytm posted a tweet that some difficulties were being faced. (Reuters)

After reaping a windfall from PM Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive that has one goal of driving the Indian public to increasingly use cashless modes (digital) of payments, one of the biggest such portals Paytm, today reportedly was down for a short duration. The site looks to be working right now, but it had posted a tweet that some difficulties were being faced by customers. Citing temporary maintenance work being carried out on the e-wallet website, Paytm posted this tweet as more and more people started talking about it on the social media: “Some of you might be facing temporary inconvenience on our platform. We’re currently updating our systems for higher capacity. Back shortly.” With PM Modi issuing a ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes to make India truly a cashless society, as well as fight black money, with one fell swoop, the NDA government has made a major strike against them – cash villains have stashed their ill-gotten gains mostly in these high denomination notes and are expected to suffer the most during the crackdown.

Among e-wallet websites that gained most post-implementation of demonetisation, as the e-transactions surged post-November 8 are Oxigen Wallet, Mobikwik Wallet, ICICI Bank’s Pockets. There are others too reaping a rich harvest. Paytm, which calls itself ‘India’s largest m-commerce platform’, has over 1.5 million offline merchants accepting it as the preferred mode of payment. From cab drivers to small vendors, the digital payment medium has been fast getting to be as common-place as cash in the Indian market.

Here’s how people reacted on Twitter to the temporary inconvenience in accessing Paytm:

So is @Paytm down. Apparently hasn’t worked all day. What gives? — barkha dutt (@BDUTT) December 15, 2016

#PayTm down. Imagine the plight of those who believed in cashless econo and said #PaytmKaro. But pehle #PayTmUpKaro — Jagpreet Singh (@iJagpreet) December 15, 2016

Even much publicised #PayTM was down today .. — Mrityunjoy Kumar Jha (@Mrityunjoykjha) November 24, 2016

#PayTM seems to be down. Unable to use it for some hours now. Wonder if it’s a genuine problem or some Anti-Demon people at work. — Suvrat Haridas (@Suvratharidas) December 15, 2016

To get even larger number of people to come to its platform, Paytm has now also waived off the one percent transaction fee while transferring Paytm wallet money to banks, for KYC-enabled merchants. Paytm claims it has to over 164 mn registered users and over 90 mn monthly transactions. Mobile internet company One97 Communications controls Paytm.