Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur asserts that India's dominant position in real-time payments, including the success of UPI, is set to foster the emergence of several billion-dollar fintech companies poised to capture global markets.
Key Points
- India's leadership in real-time payments, accounting for 49% globally, positions it to create multi-billion dollar fintech companies.
- The unique Indian model, where policymakers and private players collaborate (e.g., UPI), offers a blueprint for global expansion, especially in South East Asian emerging markets.
- Emerging markets share similar challenges to India, such as fragmented markets, multiple languages, and growing internet penetration, making them ripe for Indian fintech solutions.
- Leveraging AI presents significant opportunities for business efficiency but also carries inherent risks that require technological solutions rather than slowing down deployment.
- The growth of UPI in India was driven by low card penetration and a unique market equation, which is now seen in other developing regions.
India's leadership in real-time payments could foster several billion-dollar fintech companies capable of serving global markets, a top Razorpay official said on Wednesday. While speaking during a session at Global Fintech Fest, Razorpay CEO Harshil Mathur cited the emergence of big tech from the US, like Google, Amazon and others, because of the country's leadership in the internet, saying that similarly, the fintech ecosystem in India can be leveraged by local companies to emerge as global majors.
India's Global Fintech Opportunity
"We feel proud that 49 per cent of all real-time payments in the world are happening through India, and it's great. But I hope that other parts of the world capture a lot of the growth. "Real-time payments are going to create massive opportunity for Indian companies to go and capture their growth. I believe a lot of large multi-billion dollar companies could come
out of India because they'll be able to capture their growth in other parts of the world," he said.Mathur said India has a unique opportunity where policymakers and regulators set the base rail and private players built solutions on top of it, like UPI, and no other country has a similar mechanism.
Replicating India's UPI Success Globally
"Emerging markets in SEA (South East Asia), almost all of them are trying to push real-time payments quite deeply. The same problems are in India. The markets are fairly fragmented; there are multiple languages, and internet penetration is starting to catch up to a point where you can solve for it. "The card penetration is not as deep, so it's creating that unique problem or equation that India had and is back to that, which led to the birth and growth of UPI. I think the same ingredients exist in a lot of these markets," Mathur said.
Navigating AI's Opportunities And Risks
Talking about leveraging AI for business, Mathur said that any new technology creates its own opportunities and risks. "It is one of the most powerful technologies we have ever created. I think it solves for a lot of problems. It makes the ecosystem far more efficient, but at the same time, it comes with its own set of risks. I don't think we have yet learned the extent of those risks," he said.Mathur said that the internet created its own set of challenges, but they were solved through technology. "Similarly, any new tech that comes in that creates a risk, that's better solved through tech. The outcome is not that we are going to slow it down. The outcome is not that let's stop deployment of AI because it creates a risk. The outcome is, let's accelerate the defensive side as well," he said.
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