Goyal bullish on FinTech, Startups and Unicorns
India is poised to become one of the largest digital markets in the world as the country has achieved the highest FinTech adoption rate at 87% against the global average of 64%, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal told the 2nd Global Fintech Fest-2021 through video conferencing on 30 Sept 2021.
“At 87%, India has the highest FinTech adoption rate in the world against the global average of 64%,” Goyal told delegates at the virtual conference.
“As of May 2021, India’s United Payments Interface (UPI) has seen participation of 224 banks and recorded 2.6 billion transactions worth over US$68 billion and the highest ever, more than 3.6 billion transactions in August 2021,” Goyal underlined.
“Over 2 trillion transactions were processed using the AePS (Aadhar-enabled payment system) last year,” he added.
The Minister said India’s FinTech industry came to the rescue of people at the time of pandemic, by enabling them to carry out critical activities from the safety of their homes, particularly during the lockdown & the 2nd wave of Covid.
Goyal highlighted that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India vision has undergone a digital transformation in Mission Mode in the last seven years.
Every village in India will soon have high speed internet under the National Broadband Mission and “this power can be leveraged to make India a Fintech Innovation Hub”.
“I believe India is poised to become one of the largest digital markets with rapid expansion of mobile and internet networks. As India aims to become Aatmanirbhar, we want our industry and entrepreneurs to use local talent to produce globally marketable solutions,” he said.
“FinTech today has the potential to bring investments for mobile apps, e-commerce stores and several other digital infrastructures,” the Minister added.
“Investment inflow in the Fintech sector, which has gone up to US$10 billion since it started in 2016, has the huge potential to “Up the Game”. It will simultaneously enhance customer experience. Your strength will be augmented by the world’s 3rd largest Startup ecosystem which is hungry for growth.”
An interesting development is the emergence of embedded finance while the non-financial services sectors are also proactive in adopting FinTech solutions today.
Goyal said, “With the expansion of their value chains, we need to consume more and more Fintech services. This will grow the sector proportionally.
“Our MSMEs have also rapidly adopted FinTech solutions whether for credit, payments, accounting and tax filing.”
The Government has recently launched the Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) and Account Aggregator (AA) framework, he said. These enable formal credit flow to the most vulnerable segments, especially particularly small businesses, brings Ease for financial institutions to reach large segments by lowering distribution costs and now institutions can give smaller loans, with short repayment cycles, he elaborated.
“India is today one of the fastest growing Fintech markets with more than 2,100 FinTechs. A lot of Indian Fintech are unicorns. The Indian market is currently valued at US$31 billion, and expected to grow to US$84 billion by 2025,” he stressed. #investment #technology #economy /fiinews.com
