Indian Economy News

Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi Inaugurates Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai

Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi inaugurated Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, marking his third consecutive appearance at the event, and contrasted global economic uncertainty with India's robust 7.8% growth during the April-June quarter. He highlighted a Japanese credit rating agency's recent upgrade of India's sovereign rating to the A- category after three decades, attributing it to structural reforms and macroeconomic stability. Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi described the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as central to India's fintech story, noting that over 24 billion UPI transactions occurred in August alone, and that UPI is now live in 11 countries. He called for integrating UPI with domestic payment systems of partner countries, reducing remittance costs for the diaspora and developing indigenous payment standards and protocols.

Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi urged the fintech sector to expand beyond payments into credit, insurance, savings, investments and pensions, citing the PM SVANidhi scheme, which boosted street vendors' average annual income by over 20% and has been extended until 2030. He called for financial models tailored to small businesses and independent earners such as delivery partners, and highlighted Agentic AI, tokenisation and quantum computing as emerging forces in the financial sector. He laid out a four-point roadmap for the industry, focused on cybersecurity, ethical data protection, a strong regulator-industry innovation ecosystem and a fintech consumer protection index, urging the sector to preserve the core values that built the Digital India success story.

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