2010-2015 Digital Enabled Initiatives That Laid The Foundation for FinTech India

India’s digital payments landscape has transformed dramatically over the past five years. Today, 40% of payments (by value) are digital, contributing to a US$3T digital payment market.

India’s digital payments market is at an inflection point and is expected to more than triple from US$3T today to US$10T by 2026. Let's have a look at the most significant digital enabled initiatives that revolutionised India's financial services landscape!

1/ Year: 2010

Initiative: Aadhaar Authentication 

2/ Year: 2011

Initiative: AEPS, APBS 

3/ Year: 2012

Initiative: Aadhaar eKYC

4/ Year: 2014

Initiative: PMJDY scheme

5/ Year: 2014

Initiative: RuPay Card Network 

6/ Year: 2015

Initiative: e-Sign 

7/ Year: 2015

Initiative: Digi-Locker 

8/ Year: 2015

Initiative: Payments banks 

9/ Year: 2015

Initiative: Small Finance Banks (SFB )

*Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) was launched to empower a bank customer to use Aadhaar as his/her identity to access their Aadhaar enabled bank account. 

*APBS is a unique payment system implemented by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which uses Aadhaar number as a central key for electronically channelizing the Government subsidies & benefits in the Aadhaar Enabled Bank Accounts (AEBA) of the intended beneficiaries.

*Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, a basic savings & deposit accounts, remittance, credit, insurance, pension in an affordable manner. 

*RuPay, a product of NPCI, is the first-of-its-kind domestic Card payment network of India, with wide acceptance at ATMs, POS devices and e-commerce websites across India. It is a highly secure network that protects against anti-phishing.

*Digi-Locker is a secure cloud based platform for storage, sharing and verification of documents & certificates.

*Payments banks are new model of banks, conceptualised by the Reserve Bank of India, which cannot issue credit. These banks can accept a restricted deposit.

*Small Finance Banks (SFB) are a type of niche banks in India. Banks with an SFB license can provide basic banking service of acceptance of deposits and lending.