Fintech Can Serve The Unserved, Underserved: Noopur Chaturvedi, NPCI Bharat BillPay
Fintech can serve the underserved and unserved. It can do everything regarding financial inclusion which we could not achieve earlier, said Noopur Chaturvedi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), NPCI Bharat BillPay (NBBL) at Fintech Festival India.
Chaturvedi further added that financial inclusion leads to more savings, more savings leads to more credit availability and more credit availability leads to more safety.
Highlighting the long journey that India has made in terms of financial inclusion, Chaturvedi said, “Financial Inclusion was launched in the year 2002. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has released the Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) in 2021 to measure the extent of financial inclusion in the country.”
Chaturvedi further mentioned that the Financial Inclusion (FI) Index of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stood at 60.1 per cent for the financial year ending in March 2023, as compared to 56.4 per cent in March 2022, due to improvements in Usage and Quality dimensions.
Chaturvedi mentioned the positive impact of Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile (JAM) trinity on financial inclusion. She added that today India has 1.38 billion Aadhar Card, Jandhan programme includes 90 per cent of the adult population. Also, India is the home to the cheapest smartphones and the least data cost, all of which form the JAM trinity and create a remarkable positive impact in terms of financial inclusion.
Chaturvedi mentioned that there are people who can not write or speak English but now they can do digital transactions, this is one of the significant milestones that India has achieved in recent years.
Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is a network that allows anyone to buy and sell from each other online. It's a set of specifications based on open-sourced methodology and uses open specifications and network protocols to ensure it is independent of any one platform. Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) is a set of open standards to facilitate the various aspects of the lending value chain. It creates a common language for collaboration and partnerships between lenders and digital platforms, called lending service providers (LSPs) in OCEN parlance.
“ONDC and OCEN are also significant initiatives which have the potential to take financial inclusion to the next level,” mentioned Chaturvedi.
“UPI transactions were remarkably recorded at around 300 million each day and we want to add a further 200 million, daily transactions. We are also preparing for conversational and vernacular methods for UPI transactions,” said the CEO of NPCI Bharat BillPay.
She added that innovation is something which will take India forward.
“Microsaving and access to affordable credit can be easily achieved by Public Private Partnership (PPP). Digital literacy and digital security are crucial elements of financial inclusion. RBI has taken a set of initiatives to teach how to use digital transactions. And, NPCI is taking measures to save people money from cyber frauds and cyber thefts,” added the CEO of NBBL.
