Fintech Firms Should View Rural India As Fertile Ground: Sitharaman
The finance minister called for fintech players to focus more on cybersecurity, combatting deepfakes and improving customer service.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged fintech companies on Wednesday to look beyond urban India and tap into the vast, underserved potential of rural and agricultural markets, not just as a social responsibility, but as a business opportunity to create new markets.
Sitharaman stressed the need for greater fintech participation in the MSME lending, and said agriculture and rural markets were ripe for innovation.
"Demand in rural areas is reviving and sustaining itself," she said while addressing the Digital Payments Awards 2025, adding that farmers need better digital tools to access markets and finance.
"The speed at which innovation in India is happening is a dream for other countries," Sitharaman said. She noted that several advanced economies still lag behind India in terms of digital payment traction, crediting India’s regulatory environment for enabling that shift.
Highlighting India's 87% fintech adoption rate, far above the global average of 67%, the minister credited the "light-touch regulation, heavy-encouragement" approach for fostering the ecosystem. She praised the RBI sandbox as a model for balancing innovation with compliance and cited the growing role of digital lending, regional rural banks and account aggregator frameworks.
On the future of finance, Sitharaman said it would be phygital, which is a mix of physical presence and digital delivery. She called for fintech players to focus more on cybersecurity, combatting deepfakes, and improving customer service. She also emphasised the need for voice-based services, regional language integration and regular feedback loops.
"Without the regulator's soft touch, we wouldn't have been able to move beyond old-fashioned financial models," she said, urging the sector to keep innovating.
