A decade ago, doing anything with money in India usually meant a queue. A queue to deposit a cheque, a queue to pay a bill, a queue at the branch to ask why a loan had not been approved. Today, a vegetable seller in a small town accepts payments by showing a QR code, a college student buys a mutual fund on their phone between lectures, and a first-time borrower gets a small loan approved in minutes without ever meeting a banker. That change did not come from the old banks alone. It came, in large part, from fintech mobile app companies.
These companies have done something quietly remarkable: they have taken a financial system that once felt distant and intimidating and folded it into an app that lives in a billion pockets. In this article we look at exactly how they are reshaping India’s financial sector, what it means for consumers and institutions, and what businesses planning their own fintech app should take away from it.
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