New and Emerging Technologies in Financial Inclusion

The raison d’être of financial inclusion rests on four pillars - reaching the unreached, including the excluded, funding the unfunded and protecting the unprotected. But this is a challenge in our country where the majority of the population resides in rural areas. It is here that technology is playing a key role in finding solutions for reducing the demand and supply gaps in providing financial products and services in excluded and under- served regions. Each and every stakeholder in the financial ecosystem contributed to the ecosystem with emphasis on technology in various financial innovations. This has been characterised by the replacement of physical currency and exchange mechanisms with its digital equivalents and has changed the way we bank and pay. It is envisioned that emerging technologies will be much easier to use, cost effective, robust, safe, fast and reliable than they are now. Since the shift will be towards minimal human intervention in the entire financial transaction cycle, there would be greater usage of cutting edge technologies to overcome barriers such as language, navigation, identification and security. The emergence of an agile financial ecosystem will need to be bolstered by a robust and proactive regulatory framework.