How open banking can let any business leverage the power of fintech

Open banking has been pivotal, not just for BFSI, but for every other industry from retail to mobility with the introduction of fintech into business models.

The digital exchange of financial data facilitated by open banking is creating the building blocks for new and emerging billion-scale service models, removing inefficiencies in the system and opening new product possibilities.

Enabling a simplified framework for financial information data exchange has the potential to transform financial systems, leading to product innovation and better facilitation of financial services for customers and end users. Therefore, financial data access and distribution has significant implications not only for the concerned stakeholder institutions but also for future economic growth.

Open banking and India

Pioneered by banking incumbents, facilitated by the digital public infrastructure, and enabled by a robust entrepreneurial participation, India’s open banking ecosystem is now among one of the most advanced in the world. Notably, the country has adopted a hybrid model where both the market and government take active roles in the ecosystem's development.

As India carves its place among the largest domestic banking markets globally, open banking will play a pivotal role in powering its growth trajectory through financial inclusion and innovation at population scale.

At the heart of India’s open banking strategy resides IndiaStack, a set of APIs that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise an unique digital infrastructure to solve India’s hard problems towards presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery. Moreover, with the launch of Regulatory Sandbox and Reserve Bank Innovation Hub, the country’s approach has been that of encouragement and guidance.

With such robust innovations gaining pace, the future of India’s open banking ecosystem looks poignant and purposeful with a robust ecosystem shaping up with solutions that are enabling financial inclusion and innovation in new and exciting ways

New era in the history of financial transactions

In line with its mission to foster greater collaboration and participation in the fintech ecosystem, Visa, through the Visa Fintech Initiative, is hosting a series of webinars to help fintech startups and allied businesses participate in the fintech revolution.

The webinar titled ‘The Evolution of Open Banking’ on August 20, 2021 at 5:00 PM, brings together Nigel Verdon, Co-founder & CEO, Railsbank with Arvind Ronta, Head of Products, India & South Asia, Visa to discuss the evolution of open banking in India and how startups and allied businesses can leverage it to innovate and grow.

As a Banking As a Platform (BaaP) and API evangelist, and a 3x fintech founder, Verdon has an unmatched global perspective on the open banking opportunity. Railsbank enables any business or brand to also rapidly be a fintech. Its unique open banking platform and super simple APIs let businesses prototype, build and scale financial use-cases with relative ease. As such, the conversation will help businesses learn how to leverage open banking to open unique opportunities to create financial services, products and experiences.