PM Modi urges fintech sector to expand beyond UPI into savings, credit and insurance | Today’s news
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called for the next phase of India’s fintech growth to move beyond the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) into areas such as credit, insurance, pensions and savings.
“In addition to payments, the share of credit transactions, insurance, savings and pensions must increase in the fintech market,” he said at the seventh annual Global Fintech Festival, adding that fintech can go where traditional models cannot.
Modi also called for greater international integration of India’s digital payments infrastructure, saying UPI’s global expansion should increase beyond its current presence in a few countries.
“UPI has reached many countries, but this is the first step. We need to join the payment systems of these countries,” he said, pointing out that India has achieved this with Singapore. “We need to build this connection in different countries and in different markets,” he added. India should focus on countries with large Indian populations and significant volumes of trade with the country, Modi said.
He added that linking payment systems could also reduce transaction costs for Indians working overseas and sending money home. “Part of that money goes into transaction costs. UPI can save on that and bring money to Indians faster,” Modi said.
The prime minister also urged India to develop its own standards and frameworks for financial technology. “This system operates on standards that were designed elsewhere,” he said, referring to the existing global financial system.
“We used standards and rules made by others because we had no choice at that time. But now we have a choice, we can make our own standards and rules,” he said, adding that India should work to link these standards with the rest of the world.
Emerging technology
Modi also said that emerging technologies are creating new opportunities for the financial sector. “Technologies such as agent-based AI, quantum computing and tokenization are opening new doors in the financial sector. Now the challenge is to turn these opportunities into real impact.”
According to him, cyber security standards and ethical data protection would be important for this. He also called for a strong regulatory framework to support innovation and proposed a fintech consumer protection index that could enable companies to be rated transparently.
Modi said India’s growing ability to take risks was visible in the increasing participation of young people in the fintech ecosystem. He also pointed to India’s economic growth despite pressure on global energy markets, supply chains and trade.
The economy grew by 7.8% in June, boosting confidence in India, he said. He also highlighted the improvement in India’s sovereign rating by Japan’s credit rating agency as another indicator of global confidence in the country.
