Nandan Nilekani expects Finternet to go live with use cases in 2026

Finternet, the Nandan Nilekani-led initiative to create open, programmable infrastructure for financial services, is expected to see live use cases in 2026.

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest, the Infosys chairman said that unlocking value in real estate and gold was imperative in achieving the Viksit Bharat goal. “So, how can we bring tokenisation to land, to real estate, to gold, that's an issue. And what AI is showing us is that you can build a whole new infrastructure using agentic AI which can make it so much better,” Nilekani said. 

A concept floated in 2023 by Nandan Nilekani, Agustín Carstens (former General Manager of BIS), Siddharth Shetty, and Pramod Varma (former Chief Architect of Aadhaar), followed by a published research paper—Finternet at its core is creating an interoperable digital infrastructure architecture that can lower barriers between financial services and systems and increasing credit access.

Calling tokenisation as a global phenomenon, Nilekani said, “Finternet is a way of doing this (tokenisation ) strategically, holistically in a structured way, for all kinds of assets. At the same time [doing it] within the regulatory envelope and this comes from our learning for the last several years on how to build at scale, how to build reliably, how to work with regulators, and so on.”  

Nilekani said that Finternet looks to operate architecture inside the regulatory framework, with embedded compliance but having the ability to scale at speed in unlocking the potential value of assets.  

With 10 cohorts in eight sectors and 30 ecosystem partners, operating in four continents, “This is an idea which is going global, whether in India, Singapore, New York, San Francisco or in Switzerland. You can see the gradual expansion of what's happening and we think in 2026 we will be live,” Nilekani said.