The Global Fintech Fest 2025 wrapped up today. But even with major headwinds such as global uncertainty around trade and tariffs, slowdown in unsecured consumer lending, regulatory restrictions on payment firms, etc., everybody spoke in unison about the key themes for the sector going ahead.
Going public
The next six months will be a litmus test for the sector. Groww, Razorpay, PhonePe, Turtlemint, and Kissht public listings are lined up, and if all go smoothly, it will be a major win for the VC-backed fintech ecosystem.
Artificial intelligence
No tech fest can be conducted without diving into AI, and GFF was no exception. From payment soundboxes to anti-fraud models to next-gen AI-powered ecommerce checkout systems, the new tech was everywhere. However, no breakthrough was showcased, and even what was shown was mostly early pilots. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma perhaps got it right when he said that while there is an AI storm brewing in the US, in India it’s just a breeze right now, so the ecosystem needs to buck up.
Fraud
The dark underbelly of Indian digital payments is now a force to reckon with. Innovative fraud is making the entire policy ecosystem jittery.
“The rapid expansion of digital finance has created new challenges such as digital fraud and cyber threats,” RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said while addressing the gathering at GFF.
Along with discussing a slew of initiatives undertaken by the regulator to arrest digital fraud, a bunch of solutions around fraud prevention were also showcased. From global giants like Visa to Indian startups like Bureau, everyone was talking about how they are using AI and machine learning to predict fraud.
“While global companies set the bar high, Indian startups are also crucial for fraud prevention here,” said a fintech founder.
Infra
Whether at the convention centre or any of the shiny after-parties in the evenings, one sector that was heralded as the next big opportunity was fintech infra. Banks pay global giants like Salesforce, Oracle billions of dollars to run their tech backends. But investors are asking why Indian firms can’t grab a piece of that pie. M2P definitely has shown the way, and Zeta has also displayed its chops with the successful migration of HDFC Bank’s prepaid wallet PayZapp onto the cloud.
Bhavin Turakhia, cofounder, Zeta, told ET that he is looking to close two to three big banks in the coming months, as they are opening up to working with large tech startups to migrate their systems and backends from traditional IT companies.
Vishal Dalal, global CEO of Pismo, a Visa-owned fintech which competes with M2P, also spoke about his next big bet being India.
Dalal said that Indian banks are tech savvy, AWS has a big presence here, and the regulator is rather encouraging, so startups are emboldened to pitch their solutions to power bank backends. And if that market opens up, VCs will whip out their wallets to grab an early bite.
UPI, UPI, and UPI
The biggest success story of Indian fintech occupied centrestage at GFF, as has been the case for the last few years. But there was a sense of fatigue around how much more can Indian fintech be defined only by UPI. A large number of tech innovations launched on top of the payments platform are yet to see scale. Credit on UPI is not showing any signs of taking off. And while RuPay cards on UPI are showing some traction, UPI Circle, UPI Lite, UPI Lite X — all continue to be innovations on paper with almost no adoption on the ground.
Interestingly, there was quite a bit of conversation around mobile wallets. Be it Mobikwik talking about bringing CBDC on wallets, or Revolut launching its entire product suite on a wallet, the good old prepaid payment instrument seems to be making a quiet comeback.
Overall, GFF was grand, as expected. The stalls were larger, it was glitzy as always, but it seemed to lack a truly disruptive innovation. Like one of the founders put it aptly, while the `fin’ element was there, perhaps there is a need to focus more on the tech. For that perhaps we need an ecosystem that spawns bolder entrepreneurship.
Add Now!
Going public
The next six months will be a litmus test for the sector. Groww, Razorpay, PhonePe, Turtlemint, and Kissht public listings are lined up, and if all go smoothly, it will be a major win for the VC-backed fintech ecosystem.
Artificial intelligence
No tech fest can be conducted without diving into AI, and GFF was no exception. From payment soundboxes to anti-fraud models to next-gen AI-powered ecommerce checkout systems, the new tech was everywhere. However, no breakthrough was showcased, and even what was shown was mostly early pilots. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma perhaps got it right when he said that while there is an AI storm brewing in the US, in India it’s just a breeze right now, so the ecosystem needs to buck up.
Fraud
The dark underbelly of Indian digital payments is now a force to reckon with. Innovative fraud is making the entire policy ecosystem jittery.
“The rapid expansion of digital finance has created new challenges such as digital fraud and cyber threats,” RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said while addressing the gathering at GFF.
Along with discussing a slew of initiatives undertaken by the regulator to arrest digital fraud, a bunch of solutions around fraud prevention were also showcased. From global giants like Visa to Indian startups like Bureau, everyone was talking about how they are using AI and machine learning to predict fraud.
“While global companies set the bar high, Indian startups are also crucial for fraud prevention here,” said a fintech founder.
Infra
Whether at the convention centre or any of the shiny after-parties in the evenings, one sector that was heralded as the next big opportunity was fintech infra. Banks pay global giants like Salesforce, Oracle billions of dollars to run their tech backends. But investors are asking why Indian firms can’t grab a piece of that pie. M2P definitely has shown the way, and Zeta has also displayed its chops with the successful migration of HDFC Bank’s prepaid wallet PayZapp onto the cloud.
Bhavin Turakhia, cofounder, Zeta, told ET that he is looking to close two to three big banks in the coming months, as they are opening up to working with large tech startups to migrate their systems and backends from traditional IT companies.
Vishal Dalal, global CEO of Pismo, a Visa-owned fintech which competes with M2P, also spoke about his next big bet being India.
Dalal said that Indian banks are tech savvy, AWS has a big presence here, and the regulator is rather encouraging, so startups are emboldened to pitch their solutions to power bank backends. And if that market opens up, VCs will whip out their wallets to grab an early bite.
UPI, UPI, and UPI
The biggest success story of Indian fintech occupied centrestage at GFF, as has been the case for the last few years. But there was a sense of fatigue around how much more can Indian fintech be defined only by UPI. A large number of tech innovations launched on top of the payments platform are yet to see scale. Credit on UPI is not showing any signs of taking off. And while RuPay cards on UPI are showing some traction, UPI Circle, UPI Lite, UPI Lite X — all continue to be innovations on paper with almost no adoption on the ground.
Interestingly, there was quite a bit of conversation around mobile wallets. Be it Mobikwik talking about bringing CBDC on wallets, or Revolut launching its entire product suite on a wallet, the good old prepaid payment instrument seems to be making a quiet comeback.
Overall, GFF was grand, as expected. The stalls were larger, it was glitzy as always, but it seemed to lack a truly disruptive innovation. Like one of the founders put it aptly, while the `fin’ element was there, perhaps there is a need to focus more on the tech. For that perhaps we need an ecosystem that spawns bolder entrepreneurship.
Add 
as a Reliable and Trusted News Source
as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now!
