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In his address at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai today, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra urged businesses in the fintech sector to double down on AI, tokenisation and quantum computing to enhance financial inclusion while building consumer trust. Malhotra said India’s digital finance transformation had achieved scale, but its greatest achievement was normalising digital payments in the country. This transformation, which is largely driven by public-private partnerships, has promoted responsible innovation while maintaining public confidence in the country’s financial system. However, he said the next phase of growth must see the industry focus on taking financial services deeper into the last mile, particularly to customers and businesses that traditional financial institutions struggle to serve economically. “Reaching the last mile while serving the informal sector through micro-insurance, small pensions and small-ticket credit, and providing credit to women entrepreneurs, MSMEs, and small and marginal farmers in India’s villages and tier III and tier IV towns is a task that traditional banking and financial service providers alone struggle to accomplish economically,” Malhotra said. He said fintech companies can help bridge this gap by using tech to make smaller-ticket financial products viable for underserved customers, while also expanding access to credit, insurance and pension products. RBI Gov Calls For Tech To Be Built On A Foundation Of Trust The governor stressed that fintech growth must be accompanied by greater focus on consumer trust, data protection, cybersecurity and operational resilience. He urged fintech companies to treat customer data as a “fiduciary responsibility” and ensure that innovation does not come at the cost of trust in the financial system. He reiterated four specific objectives for fintechs — consumer service, meeting unmet financial needs like access to credit, enhancing operational efficiency, and curbing financial frauds. Malhotra linked technological deployment to systemic trust and security, warning that rapid execution without building confidence is unsustainable. “Trust is not just a marketing strategy. It is an operating discipline built transaction by transaction. It takes years to build … but it can at the same time be lost in a single episode over minutes,” he added. The RBI governor also highlighted several key moves for the financial sector that he considered critical to building trust, including: Managing risks like bias, exclusion, cybersecurity and privacy while adopting AI Act as a data fiduciary by collecting data while ensuring it is not misused outside of the consumer consent framework Taking on systemic responsibility as a business grows by ensuring operational resilience, business continuity, and cybersecurity proportional to their scale Engaging transparently with regulators through sandboxes and pilots, rather than exploiting gaps to scale first and later seeking forgiveness During his GFF 2026 inauguration address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also outlined the aforementioned four objectives for the fintech sector. PM Modi also called for fintech companies to “move beyond payments”, underlining the next opportunity lying in segments like credit, insurance and pensions. He also called to take financial services to sections of the population that have historically had limited access to formal banking. RBI’s Role In Developing India’s Fintech Ecosystem The RBI governor noted that Indian fintechs can build for the world to make the country a leader in global finance. “Many emerging economies face challenges which are very similar to ours. Our solutions for financial inclusion, affordable payments, digital identity, interoperable infrastructure, and trusted innovation can be appropriately repurposed for wider global adoption,” he said. The RBI is working towards this by not just regulating the fintech industry but working with it as a strategic partner to leverage technology, Malhotra added. Accordingly, he announced that the central bank would recognise the Unified Fintech Forum (UFF) as the second Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO) in the fintech sector, after the Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE). “These initiatives reflect our belief that regulation and innovation are not opposing forces, but they are mutually reinforcing pillars of a resilient financial ecosystem,” he added. The RBI is now focusing on digital public infrastructure, regulatory frameworks and engagement with the fintech ecosystem to support responsible innovation in the fintech segment. In line with this, Malhotra announced that the RBI and SEBI would unveil a framework for tokenisation of corporate bonds today as another step towards advancing this goal. “The Reserve Bank remains committed to this dialogue through our sandbox, our innovation hub, and our openness to engage with this ecosystem. I would ask in turn that this festival’s innovators treat trust not as a constraint on innovation, but as its very purpose,” he added. UPI Launches Today Additionally, Malhotra today unveiled UPI Tap & Pay, a new feature enabling users to make UPI payments by tapping NFC-enabled smartphones on compatible Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals. He also launched the AI-powered MyUPI platform built on NPCI’s Small Language Model (FiMI). The suite provides a single view of transactions and AutoPay mandates across banks and apps. Its key features include safety controls like declining transactions in case of a compromised account, delinking a mobile number for receiving payments, getting contextual information about a payee before making a payment, real-time chargeback for eligible transactions, and transaction replays to automatically repeat past transactions. Besides, he also unveiled an AI-powered support mechanism to UPI users, MyUPI. Built on NPCI’s FiMI model, the platform gives users a unified view of their UPI transactions and AutoPay mandates across banks and UPI apps. MyUPI also adds safety and control features, including a Safety Switch that lets users request the decline of UPI debit transactions if they suspect their account has been compromised.
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