Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday urged global fintechs to seize the opportunities thrown open to them by the rapid scaling up in India of the Account Aggregator (AA) framework, a world-leading consented data sharing national infrastructure.

Looking at the scale at which AA has grown in the last year, a wealth of opportunity lies for global Fintech to see what more can be done creatively and bring on board more into the ecosystem, Sitharaman said in her virtual inaugural address at the third edition of the Global Fintech Fest 2022.

The theme for GFF2022, a four-day-long hybrid event, is ‘Creating A Sustainable Financial World - Global | Inclusive | Green’.

Sitharaman highlighted that within 12 months since it’s launch in September 2021, the AA framework has as many as 52 RBI registered entities, including banks and NBFCs within its fold and the number of accounts participating in this system stood at whopping 1.1 billion.

She also said that global fintechs should seize the opportunities in the inclusive  digital highway ONDC and Open credit enablement platforms being put in place.

“AA network is going to revolutionise credit flow into MSMEs and they need to have sustainable sources of finance. Fintech today plays a critical role in financial inclusion schemes and programmes of the government. The idea of sabka saath sabka vikas is expected to be better achieved if we are able to use technology,” Sitharaman added.

Finance Minister also said that the India stack has been well recognised and bilateral talks with counterparts are focusing on this achievement. 

She said that digitalisation of financial services has made unbanked Indian citizens —who were remaining in informal economy —to come over to formal sources of credit. Many unemployed have benefitted from it and casual workers are seeing virtue of getting into formal financial terrain, she added.

Sitharaman highlighted as to how the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) has been instrumental in promoting digital payments. In 2020-21, the total value of UPI payments stood at $940 billion, which is about 30 per cent of country’s GDP.

In five years since its launch, UPI’s CAGR growth is 160 per cent in value. As of July 2022, there are 338 banks in India that are live on UPI platform, she noted. Sitharaman also pointed out that NPCI was actively taking UPI to international markets. She also said that Indian regulators have not been behind (the curve) as regards the fintech revolution taking place across the country.

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