The Growth Playbook for Digital Payments: Partnerships, Platforms, and Possibilities

At Bharat Fintech Fest, Sohini Rajola delivered more than a celebratory reflection on India’s digital payments success. She issued a strategic call to action: the next decade cannot run on the same playbook as the last.

India’s digital payments story is already extraordinary. But scale alone is no longer the goal. The real question now is what does this scale enable?

India did not arrive at 700 million daily transactions because of one breakthrough product or one institution. The growth was deliberate and ecosystem-led.

Banks modernized their infrastructure.
Fintechs innovated relentlessly.
Merchants embraced digital collections.
Technology providers engineered for scale and diversity.
Regulators ensured stability while enabling innovation.

Institutions like National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) helped coordinate this transformation at a population scale rarely seen globally.

Today, India processes:

~21 billion transactions per month
Nearly half of global real-time digital payments
Participation from ~680 banks
500+ million users
65+ million merchants

This was not accidental growth. It was partnership-led growth.

And that partnership model, she argued, must define the next chapter too.

At this stage, it may seem counterintuitive to talk about a “growth playbook.” Adoption is widespread. Infrastructure is stable. Transaction volumes continue to rise every month.

So why rethink strategy?

Because at this scale, growth can become uneven and fragile.

Even within India, usage intensity varies sharply. The top three states account for over 20% of transactions, while entire regions contribute only a fraction. Frequency, use cases, and depth of usage differ widely across geographies and income segments.

If left unchecked, growth can concentrate around limited behaviors and leave large segments untouched.

That would mean convenience without impact.

The first decade of digital payments focused on:

Speed
Reliability
Ubiquity
Onboarding
Incentives

It was about building reach.

The next decade must build depth.

Crossing one billion transactions a day will be a milestone and it will happen. But the more important question is:

For many small merchants, digital payments today are still just a collection tool. The QR code helps them accept money but it hasn’t necessarily improved their access to working capital, insurance, or formal credit.

And that is where the real opportunity lies.

One of the strongest insights from the session was this shift in thinking.

Digital payments create transaction trails.
Transaction trails can create financial visibility.
Financial visibility can unlock formal credit.

Yet:

Nearly 80% of MSMEs still lack access to formal credit
A significant portion of lending remains collateral-based
Many entrepreneurs operate with real income but invisible balance sheets

If digital payments do not translate into stronger access to credit, then the ecosystem has delivered efficiency but not resilience.

The next growth playbook must intentionally bridge the payments layer to the credit layer.

Speed builds headlines. Trust builds systems.

A 2-3 second payment experience is impressive. But the real test of a mature ecosystem is what happens when something goes wrong:

Failed transactions
Wrong transfers
Mandate revocations
Fraud attempts

For many users, grievance redressal is still confusing and inconsistent. If trust weakens at scale, growth can quickly become fragile.

To address this, NPCI has piloted initiatives like UPI Help an AI-driven support layer implemented across multiple banks to standardize mandate management and customer assistance. Within months, lakhs of mandates were modified or revoked seamlessly.

This is the direction of the next phase: