Sitharaman concerned about increasing cases of digital fraud in the country, appeals to fintech companies for solution
Digital Fraud: During the Digital Payment Awards 2025 in the national capital New Delhi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman emphasized on the solution to the increasing digital fraud in the country. She appealed to fintech startups to come up with concrete technical solutions to deal with the growing challenges like digital fraud, online cheating, digital arrest and deepfake.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday emphasized the need to bring technical solutions to cases such as increasing digital fraud, online fraud, and digital arrests in India. For this, she appealed to fintech startups to come up with technical solutions to deal with such increasing cases of digital fraud in the country.
Finance Minister Sitharaman said these things while addressing the Digital Payment Awards 2025 program organized in Delhi. During this, she also described 'fly-by-night' operators (who cheat people by creating fake companies) and deepfake technology as a big challenge. She said that these technologies are causing great harm to the common people.
Sitharaman further said about fintech companies that fintech companies have accelerated financial inclusion and have provided digital payment facilities to remote areas of the country. But now is the time for these companies to play an active role in dealing with new cyber threats.
During the program, the Finance Minister appealed to the fintech sector to further increase digital loan facilities for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). She said that India's fintech technologies can also prove useful on the global stage, and this will open new markets for Indian companies.
Along with this, Sitharaman said that now the acceptance of UPI payments is increasing internationally. Payment is possible with UPI at select shops in Bhutan, France, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and the UAE. She said that our fintech model can be adopted all over the world.
At the same time, Nilamla Sitharaman further said that the Indian fintech sector can touch the figure of $ 400 billion by 2028-29, and its annual growth rate is estimated to be 30%. Along with this, Sitharaman also said that so far, ₹ 44 lakh crore has been sent directly to the accounts of the people through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme, which has saved ₹ 3.48 lakh crore.
The Finance Minister said that the future financial structure will be 'phygital', i.e,. a combination of both digital and physical methods. This will give better service and confidence to the customers. It is worth noting that in the program organized in Delhi, Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary and Financial Services Secretary M. Nagaraju also outlined India's progress in the field of digital payments and fintech. Where Nagaraju said that in the financial year 2024-25, 18,587 crore transactions were done through UPI, whose total amount was ₹ 261 lakh crore.
