Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region Shri Jyotiraditya M. Scindia delivered a keynote address at the Global Fintech Festival 2026 in Mumbai, emphasizing the need for an inclusive and trusted digital financial ecosystem. He stated that before finance becomes intelligent, it must become inclusive, identifying the telecom network as the invisible foundation upon which fintech evolves, alongside compute and trust forming a new digital trinity.
India's digital transformation scale was highlighted with internet access growing from 25 crore people a decade ago to 100 crore today. Broadband access specifically grew 16 times from 6 crore to 103 crore over 10 years. The 5G rollout, initiated in 2022, now covers 99.9% of districts and 85% of the population within 26 months, supported by over 5 lakh 5G base stations and a capital expenditure of ₹4.5 lakh crore. Data costs have reduced to approximately 10 cents per GB, making India the world's cheapest data capital.
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has scaled dramatically from 90,000 transactions in its first month to involving more than 740 banks today. In FY 2025-26, UPI processed 24,162 crore transactions worth approximately ₹314 lakh crore, accounting for 84% of domestic digital transactions and representing 49% of the world's real-time digital payment volumes. The technology is being extended to nine countries at no cost to them, with plans to expand to 20 more countries.
Government initiatives have been crucial to financial inclusion. Approximately 60 crore Jan Dhan accounts and 9 billion documents on DigiLocker have reduced barriers to financial access. The Digital Bharat Nidhi is establishing 22,000 towers across 34,000 villages without telecom connectivity to achieve 100% saturation. In the North Eastern Region, fintech connectivity has reached almost every village due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's impetus.
Security measures include the Sanchar Saathi initiative, which uses the AI-powered tool ASTR to disconnect more than 88 lakh suspicious mobile connections. The Financial Fraud Risk Indicator ring-fences suspicious transactions to prevent fraudulent payments before money leaves accounts. The Minister called for standard operating procedures across banking networks to strengthen citizen protection and shift from reactive fraud detection to predictive prevention.
Looking forward, Scindia emphasized the convergence of national AI capabilities with digital infrastructure to personalize financial advice and make services autonomous. India has developed its indigenous 4G telecom stack and is working on 5G, while the 6G mission aims to contribute 10% of global patents and participate in standard development. The vision is to move from connected India to intelligent digital finance and from Digital Public Infrastructure to trusted infrastructure, making AI available to every citizen rather than remaining a corporate preserve.