Mumbai: India should leverage its experience in fintech, including the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and digital public infrastructure (DPI), to expand into global markets, particularly countries in the Global South, Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest here, Agrawal said India has an opportunity to significantly increase its financial services exports by capturing a larger share of the rapidly expanding global fintech trade.
He said that if India could account for even 10 per cent of global fintech services trade, the country could potentially increase its exports from around $8 billion currently to $60-80 billion.
“Fintech services is where trade is growing and if we can contribute even 10 percent we are talking of a journey from $8 billion to maybe $60-80 billion,” Agrawal said.
He said India is already working to take its digital public infrastructure experience to other countries and has signed memoranda of understanding with around 23 nations for cooperation in DPI. The government is also looking at integrating payment systems with partner countries, particularly those with a large Indian diaspora.
“We have done MoUs with around 23 countries for DPI cooperation, every FTA we negotiate, we also discuss aligning payments systems especially in countries where India has a huge diaspora,” he said.
Agrawal said technology can play a major role in reducing the cost of financial services, including remittances and lending. Expanding interoperable digital payment systems and deploying India’s fintech capabilities globally could help make financial services more affordable and accessible.
The Commerce Secretary also highlighted the role of free trade agreements (FTAs) in creating a more favourable regulatory environment for the fintech sector. India, he said, seeks to address barriers related to financial regulation, telecommunications, cross-border data flows, artificial intelligence, investment and movement of professionals while negotiating trade agreements.
“When negotiate FTAs, we try to remove hurdles related to financial regulation, telecommunication, data flows, AI, investment, movement of professional, to help the fintech economy,” Agrawal said.
“One of the key areas we negotiate as part of FTA talks are services trade under which we negotiate financial services, wherein we are taking commitments where we are allowing their banks to India, but we are ensuring that our banks can move to their geography,” he said.
“We are negotiating lot of FTAs, in last 4-5 years, we have done 9 such FTAs which covers 60 trillion dollars worth of GDP in terms of nations covered,” he said.
(IANS)
