Next decade an opportunity for India to build fintech architecture for the world: RBI governor Malhotra

Mumbai: Indian fintech firms, having built strong digital infrastructure at home, should now look at creating solutions for global markets, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Sanjay Malhotra said on Thursday at the Global Fintech Fest 2026.

“India’s first decade of fintech hovered largely around building for India. The next decade presents an opportunity to build for the world in India,” Malhotra said.

He said that India’s fintech ecosystem has matured, ranking third globally with $2.4 billion in funding last year and has 30 unicorns. But he cautioned that global leadership comes when other countries adopt India’s standards, ideas, and solutions.

RBI does not view fintech as an industry to regulate, but, he said, as a ‘partner in leveraging the latest technologies’.

He underlined that trust, inclusion, and responsible data use were the foundations for wider adoption. “I would urge all of you to treat data as a fiduciary responsibility, not as a business asset,” Malhotra said.

Pointing out that other countries may be facing issues similar to those India faces, he said that India’s solutions for financial inclusion, affordable payments, digital identity, interoperable infrastructure, and trusted innovation could be appropriately repurposed for wider global adoption. “Our greatest contribution will therefore lie in exporting products, sharing approaches, public digital infrastructure, governance frameworks, and institutional experience,” he said.

RBI’s work towards a comprehensive AI governance framework for the financial sector and the recently constituted Quantum Secure and Adaptive Financial Ecosystem Committee on quantum resilience reflects the central bank’s commitment to anticipate technological change, rather than merely respond to it, he said. “Our endeavour is to ensure that India remains not merely an adopter of emerging technologies, but a leader in shaping trusted, inclusive, and responsible digital finance.”

He also cautioned fintechs to take on the systemic responsibility that comes with scale, and warned them against building businesses around gaps between regulatory categories, which leads to ‘scaling first’ and ‘seeking clarity or forgiveness later’.

Trust and financial inclusion

Malhotra focused on four broad themes in this address: the potential that fintech has as an indispensable partner, trust and its ingredients, India’s global vision, and how the central bank is working to support fintechs.

“Our greatest fintech achievement is not that finance has become digital. It is that many areas of digital finance today have become common,” he said, calling for financial services to become ubiquitous, omnipresent and ensure financial inclusion. “Financial well-being of everyone, to my mind, remains the single most important purpose or potential that fintech can deliver.”

Fintech can contribute to consumer services by meeting credit and other financial needs, enhancing operational efficiency, reducing financial intermediaries’ costs, and reducing fraud through advanced technologies such as quantum computing, AI, and tokenisation. “Howsoever powerful they (these technologies) are, they are only means to an end, not ends in themselves,” he said, urging fintechs to focus on the “broader purposes these tools must serve and utilize their potential to get the fullest impact”.

Malhotra also emphasised the need for trust, data and consumer protection to increase fintech adoption. Data must be treated the way a trustee treats assets done for a benefit, collected with a clear purpose and used strictly within the consent provided, and protected as though it were one’s own.

New UPI products

Malhotra also unveiled two new UPI (Unified Payments Interface) products from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). This includes the ‘Tap & Pay’ feature, which allows UPI users to tap their phones and pay via UPI at Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals using near-field communication (NFC) technology, and a customer support AI-powered platform called ‘My UPI’.

The My UPI platform is a single-window view of customers’ transactions and mandates, as well as increased user controls, the ability to decline UPI debit transactions, delink a mobile number from receiving UPI payments, instant processing for chargebacks, and 24×7 multilingual support for grievances.