India, as a market for financial services, is ripe with untapped potential. With a population of over 1.3 billion, 80% of which is banked, the financial literacy rates remain low at 27%. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that contribute 30% to the GDP of the country, represent a credit gap of USD 397 billion. These factors present opportunities for reform and more open financial services enabled by technology and digital infrastructure.The country’s fintech landscape has witnessed a flourishing symbiotic relationship between regulatory initiatives and infrastructure blocks, which have resulted in the perfect breeding ground for incumbents and insurgents to innovate upon. Over the last two decades, India’s zealous determination in bringing a paradigm shift in its vision for financial inclusion has led to the development of the India Stack, an initiative that aims to decode the country’s monetary problems through paperless, cashless, and presence-less API systems. The four distinct technology layers, covering areas of digital identity, digital records, consent, and a democratised payments interface, lay the holistic foundation for synchrony between infrastructure and norms. The hybrid open finance model which doesn’t mandate participation but definitely incentivises it, creates healthy market competition for collaboration between the most established to the […]