PM Modi at Global Fintech Fest 2024: 'Our best is yet to come'

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his address at the Global FinTech Fest 2024 in Mumbai today, said in the last 10 years, the industry received an investment of over $31 billion, which led to around a 500% increase in fintech startups. The Prime Minister also spoke at length about the role of the Centre’s Jan Dhan Scheme in bringing financial inclusion. “India's fintech revolution is improving financial inclusion as well as driving innovation.”

He also said 'Jan Dhan' has empowered women on a big scale. “The Jan Dhan Yojana enabled around 290 million women to have bank accounts, which opened new saving and investment avenues for such women."

He said there was one time when those visiting used to get surprised looking at our 'cultural diversity'. "Now people come to our country and get surprised by the fintech diversity of our country," says PM Modi.

He says the government's initiative has helped around 53 crore people to open a Jan Dhan bank account. "This means we added a banking system equivalent to the whole European Union in the past 10 years."

He said UPI is a great example of India's fintech success. "People earlier used to say 'cash is king'. Today, India does half of the world's real-time digital transactions. UPI has become a very big example of India's fintech prowess globally."

The transformation brought about by FinTech in India is not limited to just technology, but its social impact is far-reaching, said the PM. "The fintech revolution has helped bridge the gap between rural and urban areas."

FinTech has played a significant role in democratising financial services, the PM said, adding that India has been a unique place in terms of tech adoption in terms of both speed and scale. "A huge credit for this goes to India's Digital Public Infrastructure-DPI and India's fintechs." He said he was confident that India's fintech ecosystem will increase "Ease of Living" across the world. "Our best is yet to come."

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das, who also spoke at the Global Fintech Fest on August 28, 2024, said that the central bank was working towards making UPI and RuPay ‘truly global.’ He emphasised the progress already made in UPI and RuPay, with deployments in countries like Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, the UAE, Mauritius, Namibia, Peru, and France, among others. He explains that through central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), the RBI was now leveraging programmability to deliver credit or government aid to landless tenant farmers, as well as carbon credits to other farmers.

Das also noted CBDC interoperability with systems like UPI and ongoing experiments with offline solutions. He mentioned the RBI's openness to collaborating with other countries on CBDC developments. He said DPI, which includes frameworks like Aadhaar, UPI, and online bill payments, will make the financial system work better.