The 9th Global Fintech Fest in India took place in Mumbai from September 8 to 11, attended by Prime Minister Modi and several senior financial regulators. The event focused on the impact of agentive AI, tokenization, and quantum technologies on the financial system.Author: Yang Chen
Source: Wall Street Journal
Over the past decade, India has transformed the way money moves, with its homegrown real-time payment system changing the payment habits of millions. Today, as artificial intelligence reshapes finance, India is preparing for an even greater leap.
From September 8 to 11, the annual Global Fintech Fest is being held in Mumbai, where Prime Minister Modi will deliver the opening keynote speech, joined by senior officials including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra, and SEBI Chairperson Tuhin Kanta Pandey.
The core agenda of the meeting focused on the potential impact of agentic AI, tokenization, and quantum technologies on the financial system.
The timing of this conference is particularly significant. In August this year, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processed 24.51 billion transactions worth approximately ₹29.82 trillion (about $315 billion), becoming the core infrastructure of India’s retail payment system.
Driven by the AI wave, whether this system can further evolve into an intelligent financial platform with autonomous decision-making capabilities has become a focal point of industry attention.
AI is reshaping finance, with India standing out as a key market
AI technology has taken root in India's financial institutions. Major banks are using AI agents to automate operations and customer service, while algorithms are widely applied to risk monitoring, fraud detection, and borrower eligibility assessment. In the future, AI is expected to expand further into higher-autonomy scenarios, such as assisting consumers with payments and customizing financial products.
Vivek Iyer, partner at consulting firm Grant Thornton Bharat, said that broader application of AI in operations and governance can significantly reduce costs by improving efficiency.
India’s demographic structure provides an additional advantage. More than 65% of India’s population is under the age of 35, forming a vast cohort of digital natives. According to Rishi Chhabra, Head of Visa India:
We are extremely, extremely bullish on the Indian market. India has a growing young population, and there is a fundamental shift in digital adoption, giving the country the potential for leapfrogging in commerce and payments.Regulatory balancing: Encouraging innovation while managing risks
Expanding AI autonomy also introduces new risk exposures—from model bias and erroneous decisions to cyberattacks, and disputes over accountability when AI agents make incorrect payments or financial decisions.
Globally, regulators are assessing whether existing rules can apply to financial systems where algorithms are increasingly operating without human oversight.
The Reserve Bank of India has proposed a draft regulatory framework requiring banks to strengthen oversight of AI and machine learning risks through board-approved policies, enhanced internal controls, and a comprehensive inventory of models.
It is reported that Reserve Bank Governor Malhotra and Deputy Governors Shirish Chandra Murmu and Rohit Jain will clarify the central bank’s stance and approach to addressing these challenges at the conference.
Nitin Sharma, founding partner at Antler India, noted that UPI’s success lies in solving the coordination challenge—enabling every bank, every app, and every merchant to "speak the same language"; the introduction of AI will now impose new governance requirements on this system.
The profitability model of UPI is questionable, and its sustainability remains unresolved.
Beyond AI issues, this conference will revisit an old question that has become increasingly unavoidable since the rise of UPI: who will pay for the infrastructure behind India’s online payment boom?
Since 2020, UPI transactions have been exempt from merchant discount fees (MDR), directly reducing the revenue space for banks and payment companies. Currently, the Indian government is considering allowing fees to be charged on transactions routed through UPI.
This means that the next phase of India’s digital finance must solve two challenges simultaneously: first, how to make payments and banking systems intelligent enough to enable a higher degree of autonomous decision-making; and second, how to build sustainable business models around the infrastructure that supports it all. Both are interdependent and equally essential.