Shaping the Next Decade of Finance – Technology, Trust and Innovation - Keynote Address by Shri Sanjay Malhotra, Governor, Reserve Bank of India at the Global Fintech Festival 2026, Mumbai on September 10, 2026 -

Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here at the Global Fintech Fest once again. Over the years, this platform has evolved beyond being an industry conference to a forum where policymakers, regulators, innovators, financial institutions, entrepreneurs and academia come together to exchange ideas that will shape the future of finance.

2. Let me begin by complimenting the organisers - the Payments Council of India, the National Payments Corporation of India, and the Fintech Convergence Council - for their tireless work in building this festival into what is today the world’s largest gathering of its kind. RBI has been supporting this event, and it gives me immense pleasure to see it attain the scale and stature that it has. Once again, it is a privilege to share my thoughts today with all of you.

3. I want to commend the organisers for placing trust, financial inclusion and global aspirations at the very heart of this year’s theme - “Potential to Impact: Trusted, Connected, Global Systems for Inclusive Finance”. I mention this because potential translates into impact only when the benefits of innovation reach everyone, not merely the already well-served. For it to happen, innovation has to be anchored in trust. The element of global vision is relevant as it is an opportune time to expand our ambitions.

4. In essence, therefore, I wish to talk today about the following themes:

the potential that fintech has as an indispensable partner,

trust, and its ingredients

global vision; and

how we are working to support fintech.

I. Potential for Impact

5. A decade ago, much of what we now take for granted in our financial system was spoken of only as potential - an aspiration to be worked towards. Today, that potential has become impact, visible in the daily lives of thousands of millions of Indians. Today, there are about 57 crore PMJDY accounts. Over 85 crore (27.84 Cr – PMJJBY + 58.78 cr – PMSBY) micro insurance policies through Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) have been issued. Over 9 crore people are covered under the Atal Pension scheme, and about 60 crore beneficiaries under PM Jan Arogya Yojana. 280 billion digital transactions in FY2025-26 and some 24 billion UPI transactions happen every month. These represent the impact of the fastest transformation of financial behaviour witnessed anywhere in the world. Yet, the most remarkable aspect of this transformation is not the scale of these numbers. It is that digital finance has quietly become an ordinary part of everyday life. Our greatest fintech achievement is not that finance became digital; it is that many areas of digital finance have become common. A hawker or a street florist displaying a QR code to receive payments is a common sight. This is a simple but powerful example of the massive financial inclusion that has taken place right before our eyes.

6. How did this happen? Not merely because of technology, not merely because of entrepreneurship, and certainly not because of the government or the regulators. It happened because of the public private partnership, which facilitated entrepreneurship and innovation, while maintaining trust and preserving public confidence. My congratulations and commendation to all involved, especially the innovators, the entrepreneurs and the fintech industry.

7. At the same time, while we have many achievements under our belt, we still have miles to go before we sleep. The scope and potential are indeed great. We need to make all financial services ubiquitous. Financial inclusion or ensuring financial well-being remains, to my mind, the single most important purpose that fintech can serve. Reaching the last mile via savings products for the informal sector, micro-insurance, small pensions, small-ticket credit, credit for women entrepreneurs, small and marginal farmers, in India’s villages and tier-3 and tier-4 towns, is a task that traditional banking and financial service providers alone struggle to accomplish economically. Modern tools of underwriting and credit assessment, applied to this task, have made it commercially viable in ways unimaginable a generation ago. Yet, too much of the industry’s efforts, understandably, gravitates toward customers who are already banked, already digitally literate, already visible to a credit bureau, just because the underlying cost-benefit justifies it. The harder work of reaching those still outside the system is where “potential to impact” is least realised today, and where it matters the most. I would only ask that connecting the last man standing in the queue remains the focus of today’s innovation and not merely a footnote to it, as fintechs have a big role to play in this.

8. As part of my FIBAC address some time ago, I had spoken of four other broad areas, apart from financial inclusion, where AI can be of use, viz., consumer service, meeting unmet credit and other financial needs, enhancing operational efficiency of banks and other financial intermediaries, and reducing fraud. These are some areas where fintechs can contribute using advanced technologies such as AI, quantum computing and tokenisation.

9. Each of these technologies is powerful. Yet, however powerful, they are means to an end, not ends in themselves. I will therefore urge all of you and the fintech industry to focus on the broader purposes these tools must serve and realise their “potential to impact”.

II. Building Trust

10. Let me now move to trust, the other important element of the theme of the conference. Trust is not a marketing slogan. It is an operating discipline, built transaction by transaction. It takes years to build but can be lost in a single episode.

11. For centuries, finance has continued to perform the same essential functions - to help people save, borrow, invest, transfer value and manage risk. The instruments have evolved, the institutions have changed, but trust has remained the enduring foundation of every financial system.

12. Kautilya, in the Arthashastra, recognised that a strong and well-governed financial system was indispensable to the prosperity and stability of the State. His broader insight was that economic progress depends not merely on the creation of wealth, but on institutions that inspire confidence and enable commerce to flourish.

13. Long before modern banking networks, electronic payments or digital platforms existed, the trust reposed in instruments known as Hundis, enabled Indian merchants to conduct trade across vast distances. A handwritten Hundi issued in one trading centre would be honoured hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away, often without instantaneous communication or formal institutional arrangements. What made this remarkable system work was not the paper on which the Hundi was written, rather, it was the reputation of the merchant, the confidence of the trading community and the trust that the promise embodied in that document would be honoured.

14. Today, our financial system looks very different: money moves in milliseconds, algorithms assist decision-making, and AI is beginning to transform financial services. But the underlying principle remains the same. A financial system that moves at the speed of light, but that people do not trust will not find takers.

15. Earlier trust rested primarily on a merchant’s market standing. Today, it rests on institutions. Tomorrow, it must extend to the intelligent financial systems that increasingly shape economic decisions. Technology creates possibilities, innovation enables progress, but trust creates adoption and endurance. When combined together, they create impact which is transformational.

16. Let me highlight some ingredients I consider indispensable for building trust.

17. First, at the FIBAC last month, I had mentioned risks pertaining to opacity, bias and exclusion, concentration and herding, cybersecurity, data privacy and security, and erosion of human judgement, among others, while adopting AI. I would again emphasise that mitigating these risks is important for maintaining consumer trust.

18. Second, treat data as a fiduciary responsibility, not a business asset. Every fintech in this room holds something more valuable than capital: it holds the data - financial and non-financial - of real people. This data must be treated the way a trustee treats assets held for a beneficiary: collected with clear purpose, used strictly within the consent given, and protected as though it were one’s own. The Account Aggregator framework was built precisely to formalise this principle - consent-based, purpose-limited data sharing, architected so that no single entity, including the aggregator itself, can see or exploit the underlying data. I would urge every fintech to internalise that architecture as a value, rather than merely comply with it as a rule. Where a firm treats customer data as a monetisable asset first and a responsibility second, trust erodes and once it does, it does not return easily.

19. Third, financial institutions must take systemic responsibility that scales with size. Many fintechs may be outside the perimeter of prudential regulation - and rightly so, since proportionate regulation should not burden early-stage innovation. But as a firm’s payment volumes, lending book, or user base grows to a point where its disruption could meaningfully affect the financial system, that firm acquires a responsibility that goes beyond its balance sheet or its shareholders. I would describe this as the obligation to be not just “too big to fail” but “too significant to be careless.” Operational resilience, business continuity, and cybersecurity are not burdens to be minimised; they are the price of the scale a firm has achieved.

20. Fourth, I would gently caution against a mindset of structuring a business around the gaps between regulatory categories, or of scaling first and seeking clarity or forgiveness later. The sandbox and pilot mechanisms we have built exist precisely so that innovators can engage with us early, test assumptions under supervision, and shape rules that are workable for genuine innovation. A firm that engages transparently not only earns regulatory goodwill but also gains faster, more durable pathways to scale. On the other hand, a firm that seeks to outrun the rules realises that the rules catch up, sooner or later, and at a much higher cost to itself and to the trust of the customers it serves.

III. Global Vision

21. Let me now briefly share my thoughts on global vision for Indian fintech. Our fintech ecosystem today ranks third globally by funding, having attracted USD 2.4 billion in 2025; and is home to 30 fintech unicorns. India’s first decade of fintech was largely about building for India. The next decade presents an opportunity to build for the world. Many emerging economies face challenges similar to those we face in India. As a result, our solutions for financial inclusion, affordable payments, digital identity, interoperable infrastructure and trusted innovation can 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.

22. Global leadership is not achieved simply because a country develops advanced technology. It is earned when others look to that country for its adoption, its ideas, standards, and solutions. India has the opportunity to become a trusted partner in shaping the future architecture of global finance. Let us together work towards this.

IV. How the Reserve Banks Supports This Partnership

23. The Reserve Bank stands committed to supporting the industry in building a Trusted, Connected, Global Systems for Inclusive Finance. The Reserve Bank does not view fintech merely as an industry we regulate. We view it as a strategic partner in leveraging the latest technologies including the three technological pillars around which this year’s programme is built - AI, quantum technology and tokenisation - in fulfilling our own core mandate - a stable, efficient, and inclusive financial system.

24. We have tried to sustain this partnership with concrete institutional support. The Regulatory Sandbox, now on-tap and with an open cohort, continues to provide innovators with a controlled environment to test new products and solutions under real conditions, with real customers, before full-scale launch. Our annual HaRBInger global hackathon has emerged as a platform for addressing real-world financial sector challenges through collaborative innovation.

25. For a regulated development of the fintech industry, we have implemented the Self-Regulatory Organisation framework for this sector. It shall promote responsible conduct, develop industry-led baseline standards, build capacity and facilitate constructive engagement with the regulator, policy makers and other stakeholders. Two years ago, we gave recognition to the first SRO for Fintechs at this very forum. Today I am pleased to announce the recognition of United FinTech Forum as the second SRO in FinTech sector.

26. Together, these initiatives reflect our belief that regulation and innovation are not opposing forces, but mutually reinforcing pillars of a resilient financial ecosystem.

27. At the same time, we are building digital public infrastructure for the next generation of financial services. The Unified Lending Interface (ULI) is creating common digital rails for frictionless, consent-based credit delivery. Account Aggregator is another framework made available to fintechs to build upon and facilitate penetration of financial services.

28. The MuleHunter.ai - RBI’s digital fraud-detection system - is harnessing data and AI to strengthen fraud prevention and preserve the integrity of the digital payments ecosystem. The proposed Digital Payments Intelligence Platform (DPIP) shall further help in this endeavour.

29. Our ongoing pilots on programmable CBDC are exploring targeted government benefit transfers, such as the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, and other innovative use cases.

30. Our tokenisation initiatives including Certificates of Deposit issued through the Unified Markets Interface using wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) are helping us understand the potential future architecture of financial markets. Today, we take the next step in our tokenisation journey as we unveil the tokenisation of corporate bonds with settlement through CBDC as a joint initiative with SEBI and with the involvement of other stakeholders.

31. Underlying all of this is a regulatory philosophy: proportionate, activity-based regulation-same activity, same risk, same regulatory treatment, regardless of who performs it, calibrated to capacity across the diverse spectrum of institutions. We keep regulation light-touch where innovation is nascent and risk contained, and step in only when activity grows to scale so as to become a systemic risk or for reasons of consumer conduct.

32. Looking ahead, the recommendations of the RBI’s FREE-AI Committee, the draft framework on Model Risk Management, our work towards a comprehensive AI governance framework for the financial sector, and the recently constituted Quantum Secure and Adaptive Financial Ecosystem (Q-SAFE) Committee on quantum resilience reflect our commitment to anticipate technological change rather than merely respond to it. 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.

V. Concluding Remarks

33. Let me close where I began. “Potential to Impact” is not a description of a technology roadmap. It is a description of a choice - the choice to build systems that people trust, that reach the people who need them most and that are global. India’s own fintech story shows this is possible at extraordinary scale. But it also shows that this outcome was never automatic - it is the product of deliberate design, sustained dialogue between regulators and innovators, and a shared vision of the financial system we want to build.

34. The Reserve Bank remains committed to that dialogue - through our sandboxes, our innovation hub, our openness to engage early and often 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. That is how potential, in fintech as in everything else, becomes enduring and global impact.

35. I wish the Global Fintech Fest 2026 successful and productive discussions ahead. Thank you.