Beyond UPI: why the next frontier of Indian fintech is credit for rural India

India has built one of the most successful public payments infrastructures in the world. In August 2026 alone, UPI processed 24.5 billion transactions ^{1[1]NPCI. UPI product statistics, August 2026. npci.org.in}. More than 59 crore Jan Dhan accounts have been opened since 2014, nearly 78% of them in rural and semi-urban areas ^{2[2]Ministry of Finance. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana — progress report, August 2026. pmjdy.gov.in}. The Reserve Bank of India's Financial Inclusion Index rose to 67.0 out of 100 in March 2025, up from 64.2 a year earlier, with the RBI attributing the gain mainly to better usage and quality of services ^{3[3]Reserve Bank of India. "Financial Inclusion Index for March 2025," press release, July 2025. rbi.org.in}.

Access to an account and a payment app is no longer the main barrier. The harder problem is everything that comes after a payment: credit that fits a farmer's seasonal cash flow, insurance that pays out quickly, and savings products people actually trust.

Small farmers and village shop owners have always been hard to lend to. They rarely have formal income statements or collateral, and the cost of assessing a small loan by hand often exceeds the profit on it. The result is a familiar pattern: formal credit is hardest to get exactly when it is most needed, and informal lenders fill the gap at high cost.

Digital public infrastructure is changing the inputs to that equation:

• Digital payment trails. Every UPI transaction leaves a record of real economic activity, even for businesses with no balance sheet.
• Consented data sharing. Under the RBI's Account Aggregator framework, people can choose to share their financial data with a lender securely and for a specific purpose. The government reports that 2.88 billion financial accounts are now enabled to share data through the network ^{4[4]Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance. Account Aggregator Framework, March 2026. financialservices.gov.in}.
• Sector-specific signals. For farmers, data such as machinery bookings, harvest timing and input purchases can say a lot about creditworthiness — when it is shared with consent.

Our fintech vertical is in the research stage. We are investigating three questions:

1. Cash-flow underwriting for smallholders and rural MSMEs. Can consented payment and Account Aggregator data support fair working-capital credit for people with thin credit files?
2. Embedded agri-finance. Through Farmo, we see the moments when farmers need money: before land preparation, at sowing and at harvest. Could pay-after-harvest options for machinery and labour bookings reduce reliance on informal credit?
3. Explaining finance in plain language. Can a voice-first assistant explain interest, repayment schedules and risks in a farmer's own language, so that consent is genuinely informed?

Credit can do harm as easily as good. Our working principles are simple:

• Regulated partners only. Any lending product would be offered through RBI-regulated entities, in line with the RBI's digital lending rules.
• Consent and minimal data. We use only data that people knowingly choose to share, for a stated purpose.
• Affordability over volume. Repayment schedules should follow harvest cycles and real cash flows, not the other way round.

Payments brought hundreds of millions of Indians into the formal financial system. The next step is making that system work for the way rural India actually earns. If you are a bank, an NBFC or a researcher working on these questions, we would welcome a conversation.