Fintech push: RBI Governor urges startups to serve the unbanked, calls for trust and inclusion
Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra on Wednesday urged the country’s fast-growing fintech ecosystem to prioritise financial inclusion and build products for the underserved, instead of focusing only on the privileged segments that promise higher profits.Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest, Malhotra acknowledged that catering to affluent consumers can be lucrative but cautioned startups to ensure that the “unreached and unserved” sections of society are not left behind, PTI reported.“Build for inclusion. While there may be higher profits to be made by deepening access to the haves and the privileged, prioritise building systems to expand financial services to the unaccessed, the unreached and the unserved segments of society,”Malhotra told a packed audience of fintech stakeholders.He called on companies to design accessible and easy-to-use solutions for vulnerable groups such as senior citizens, people with limited digital literacy, and the specially-abled. Fintechs, he said, should embed trust, transparency, and data protection in all offerings to maintain compliance and safeguard consumers.Malhotra noted that India now has over 10,000 fintech firms that have collectively raised more than $40 billion over the past decade. Describing technology as a “force multiplier” for economic development, he credited the sector for delivering financial services at population scale and affordable costs.The RBI governor also urged fintechs to expand credit access using the infrastructure built in recent years, ensuring that small businesses and individuals benefit from easier lending. He further highlighted the need to design systems so efficient that customers rarely need human support.On the issue of rising digital frauds, Malhotra said it had become a growing concern for the central bank. He cited the success of MuleHunter, a fraud-tracking solution developed by an RBI subsidiary, which has achieved a 90% success rate in detecting accounts used for fraudulent transactions.Malhotra also said that the 17 account aggregators operating in the country must integrate more financial data and enhance interoperability. The RBI, he added, is introducing new standards to improve customer onboarding, data security, and user experience under the aggregator framework.Addressing unmet credit demand, the governor said the Unified Lending Interface could help bridge lending gaps, calling credit the “lifeblood of inclusive growth.” He also revealed that the central bank is developing a Unified Markets Interface, a next-generation financial market infrastructure that will tokenise financial assets and enable settlements using wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).Meanwhile, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said his proposed ‘Finternet’ ecosystem — a unified, tokenised financial network — will go live in 2026. It aims to bring together assets such as land, property, bonds, and investments on a single interoperable platform.The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also announced several initiatives, including AI-based UPI HELP powered by a Small Language Model (SLM) for dispute resolution, IoT-based payments via UPI for connected devices, an interoperable ‘Banking Connect’ solution, and ‘UPI Reserve Pay’, which allows users to securely block and manage credit limits across platforms.
