GFF Thought Leadership Reports - Global Fintech Fest 2025

UPI - The Global Benchmark for Digital Payments

India’s digital payments revolution has become a global benchmark. This joint report by NPCI and BCG explores how UPI has redefined inclusion, innovation, and scale—transforming the way 500+ million Indians transact every day. From empowering small merchants and households to enabling global interoperability, the study captures UPI’s journey as a catalyst for social progress, economic growth and a blueprint for nations aspiring to build resilient, real-time payment ecosystems.

Convergence: Human + AI For The Next Era Of Finance

This year’s GFF flagship report explores AI’s profound impact on Indian finance—analyzing readiness, real use cases, policy strategies, and fintech trends for an inclusive, globally competitive AI-driven ecosystem.

How Urban India Pays

India is experiencing an unprecedented shift from cash to digital, with retail digital payments growing from ₹1 trillion in FY21 to ₹4.4 trillion in FY25 (43% CAGR) and projected to cross ₹7 trillion by 2030. Today, digital powers 90% of online spends and over half of offline transactions. Adoption is broad-based—smaller towns, aspiring consumers, and women entrepreneurs (80% cashless) are driving inclusion. UPI leads the charge, strengthened by innovations like UPI Lite and contactless payments. With trust, speed, and rewards fueling uptake, India is shaping a cashless, empowered, and globally recognized digital-first economy.

Reimagining Global Financial Services and Payments through Emerging Tech

Explore "Reimagining Finance," a report on emerging technologies—AI, blockchain, Metaverse—and their impact on transforming global finance, streamlining processes, boosting security, and expanding financial inclusion and opportunities.

The Indian Payments Handbook 2025-30

Discover PwC's The Indian Payments Handbook 2025–2030—your guide to digital payments trends, growth drivers, statistics, and regulatory insights on UPI, cards, NETC, and Bharat Connect, empowering a secure, inclusive payments ecosystem.

From Automation to Autonomy

This whitepaper explores agentic AI’s revolutionary impact on payments, highlighting its evolution, proactive personalization, real-world innovations, and addressing governance, compliance, ethics, with actionable insights for a secure, efficient, inclusive ecosystem.

Investing in India's Fintech Disruption

The report gives a full picture of India’s FinTech sector, covering funding trends, sector and state-wise growth, funding stages, key acquisitions, and deep dives into digital lending, payments, insurtech, wealthtech, in addition to chronicling the main opportunities and challenges across these subsectors.

Unlocking Efficiency Through Ring-fencing

India’s financial services landscape has matured into a landscape of multi-licensed and non-licensed conglomerates, with licensed entities operating across regulatory domains governed by the RBI, SEBI, and IRDAI. Amidst the heavy compliant businesses to run, flexibility in operating, especially during early stages, through lean operating models has emerged as a preference for most of the FS entities. However, given the regulated nature of such entities, having ring-fencing, accountability and independence in governance across people, process, data and technology is also quintessential. Striking a balance between these two objectives – agile operating models and structured compliance, has emerged as a key focus area in the recent times for FS regulated entities. In this paper, we have sought to deep dive into various facets that determine and drive the decision matrix for centralization vs. ring-fencing various functions/ activities within a regulated FS setup.

The Fintech Pulse: Charting India's Small Ticket Lending Trends

This report explores the shifting landscape of unsecured lending and MSME (Small ticket Business Loan) financing in India, with a focus on how fintech’s are adapting to new regulatory norms and recalibrating their lending strategies. The report examines the effects of frequent reporting requirements on data accuracy and lender practices, while also analysing borrower trends across geographies, and risk categories. It highlights emerging patterns in small-ticket loans, score transitions, and credit access disparities, offering insights into how lenders can strengthen portfolio quality and promote financial inclusion—especially in Tier-2 to Tier-4 cities. By combining policy context with bureau-driven analytics, the publication aims to support responsible lending and smarter risk management across the fintech ecosystem.

India’s fintech evolution: From Growth to resilience

India’s fintech sector is entering a new phase - one defined not by rapid expansion, but by sustainable value creation. As global benchmarks shift and investor priorities evolve, the focus is turning to governance, profitability, and long-term resilience. This publication explores how India’s fintechs are recalibrating from funding resets across subsectors to the rise of leaner, compliance-ready models. PE/VC firms are now prioritizing stability over scale, seeking businesses that balance innovation with operational discipline. We compare India’s fintech maturity against global peers, analyze investor themes for 2025, and spotlight emerging opportunities across embedded finance, digital lending and RegTech. As the sector matures, resilience is becoming the new investor mantra and fintechs that align with this investor mindset could easily partake in opportunities offered by future waves of innovation.

Fragmented or Fortified? The Rise of a Layered Fintech Landscape

This report focuses on the Indian fintech sector that is moving beyond its disruptive origins, entering a nuanced phase shaped by two powerful, interdependent trends. At one end, large fintechs are consolidating their positions, building full-stack platforms that offer a broad suite of financial services under a single roof. At the other, a surge of specialized startups is making its mark by tackling highly specific, complex problems—pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with focused innovation and tailored solutions for specific needs. This dual movement is crafting a multi-layered marketplace where scale delivers unmatched reach and efficiency, while specialization injects continual innovation and adaptability in responding to customer needs with agility.