India's fintech market projected to grow to over $400 billion by FY29, says FM Nirmala Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today said India is moving towards establishing a unified lending interface, similar to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), adding that the country’s fintech market is projected to grow to over $400 billion by 2028-29.

“[Over] 1867.7 crore UPI transactions worth ₹25.14 lakh crore took place in May this year, up 33.1% year-on-year (YoY) in terms of volume and 23% YoY in terms of value. [A total of] ₹44 lakh crore has been transferred via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) since 2014, with full transparency. Leakages worth ₹3.48 lakh crore have been removed. Like UPI, we will soon have unified lending interface. We are moving very much ahead on it,” Sitharaman said while addressing Digital Payments Awards 2025, organised by the Department of Financial Services in the Ministry. 

“The fintech revolution in India will further flourish. Our fintech market is projected to grow to over $400 billion by 2028-29, reflecting an anticipated annual growth of over 30%. The scale of opportunity is immense. I firmly believe its best chapters are yet to be written,” she said. 

“Together, let us ‘Innovate, Include, and Inspire’. Innovate new solutions fearlessly, include every citizen in your vision, and inspire the world with what India can achieve,” she added.

The minister said the speed at which innovation is taking place in the country is a dream for many other countries. “Several advanced countries are nowhere close to the kind of momentum our fintech companies have achieved, not just in terms of progress in their respective areas, but also in creating entirely new paradigms. This is something which is very unique of the Indian fintech sector,” she said.

Quoting a World Bank study, Sitharaman said that through digital public infrastructure (DPI), India achieved an 80% financial inclusion rate in just 6 years. “Some observers who have gone through this report have said that this feat would have otherwise taken nearly 50 years,” she said.

“India now accounts for almost half of all real-time digital payment transactions (48.5%) in the world. Over 35 crore users are part of the UPI ecosystem. During the pandemic, payment apps became lifelines, enabling contactless payments and doorstep banking when mobility was restricted,” Sitharaman said. 

“As per RBI, India’s Digital Payments Index, which measures the overall usage of digital payments, has quadrupled in the last 5 years, from 100 in 2018 to 465 in 2024,” she added.