Indian fintech market expected to reach USD 150 bn in valuation by 2025: MoS Finance

The growth in Indian fintech startups has been exponential and the market is expected to reach USD 150 billion in valuation by 2025, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a conference organised by industry chamber Assocham, Chaudhary said fintech has emerged as one of India’s immensely growing sectors and has garnered increasing interest from all stakeholders, both within and outside the country. “A majority of the Indian fintech startups are not even a decade old, but the progress and growth shown by these firms has been exponential over the past few years. Indian fintech market is expected to reach USD 150 billion in valuation by 2025,” the minister said.

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India’s fintech adoption rate is at 87 per cent as against the global average of 64 per cent, he noted. UIDAI CEO Saurabh Garg said the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System in a way has revolutionised banking by doing away with the need for having a brick-and-mortar branch. More than 50 lakh banking correspondents across the country are carrying out “cash in cash out” kind of transactions using the system, he added.

He also said Aadhaar offers the ability to easily onboard customers. Google Pay Vice President for Product, Ambarish Kenghe said the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has made it easy for people to carry out transactions and the technology is successful because various partnerships have been put in place to deploy it. “Partnership is absolutely critical to success. We… think of it as a zero sum game. In fact, fintech has been a victim of that. There has been speculation about who is competing with whom and who is going to eat, whose lunch and so on.

“But really going back to Indian philosophy, the world is my family. The reality is that a variety of ecosystem players working together towards a single goal is what makes systems like UPI safer,” Kenghe said Paytm Vice President Dharmender Jhamb said smartphone penetration in the society has led to fintech industry growing rapidly and the digitisation goal of the government will reach more than 3,000 cities till 2025. “There is a need for a proper cyber security system, real time disputes to be solved and emergency purposes with tech consultation,” Jhamb said.