“Do we really need another UPI wallet?”

It’s the kind of question that now echoes in investor meetings, founder brainstorms, and LinkedIn comment threads. India's fintech space—once the poster child of startup ambition—exudes signs of crowding. From lending to payments to neobanks, nearly every use case seems stereotyped.

But scratch beneath the surface, and a different story emerges. One where deep tech, underserved niches, infrastructure plays, and regulatory tailwinds could shape the next wave. Has Indian fintech truly hit a ceiling—or are we just measuring disruption with the wrong lens?

Reading the Signals: Saturation or Evolution?

To address the question of saturation, we first need to define it. If we take saturation to mean an abundance of similar players offering indistinguishable services—then yes, parts of Indian fintech are undeniably crowded. But equating saturation with a lack of opportunity is misleading.

The U.S. gave birth to Square and Stripe after PayPal had become a household name. China’s Ant Group scaled into entirely new territories even as WeChat Pay dominated. Market maturity doesn't preclude disruption—it demands more thoughtful, infra-layer innovation.

Are we misreading maturity for stagnation? The truth is, innovation cycles shift. When a market matures, disruption moves downstream—from shiny apps to the systems that make them possible.

Where Disruption Stalled—And Why

The previous wave of fintechs in India focused largely on consumer-facing products: digital wallets, BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later), micro-lending apps, wealth management apps, and neobanks. Many of these models grew quickly, but were thin on differentiation. Distribution was prioritized over product depth. The real challenge—building trust in credit, simplifying underwriting, creating modular financial services—was often deferred.

Meanwhile, regulators stepped in. BNPL players hit compliance roadblocks. Data protection frameworks tightened. The winds changed, and the once-frenzied fintech party got a reality check. Add to that a funding winter, and it became clear—what worked in 2018 won’t survive in 2025.

The Next Disruption Won’t Look Like the Last

Here’s the crux: the nature of disruption is changing.

The next fintech disruptor in India might not just be another lending app or payments layer. It might not even be consumer-facing. Instead, disruption is shifting to the infrastructure side—what we call the “plumbing” of financial services.

Take Account Aggregators (AA), part of India’s Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA). Still under the radar for most consumers, this framework enables secure, consent-based sharing of financial data across banks, insurers, lenders, and investment platforms. Imagine a future where underwriting for credit, health insurance premiums, or SME loans becomes seamless and instantaneous—not because of a slick UI, but because of invisible infra.

Then there's OCEN (Open Credit Enablement Network), which aims to make credit disbursal as scalable and programmable as UPI made payments. If successful, OCEN could enable millions of small businesses to access affordable credit through platforms they already use — e-commerce portals, accounting tools, even Kirana tech.

So, can the next wave of fintech be invisible to the consumer—but deeply valuable to the ecosystem? Absolutely.

Serving the Underserved: Fintech’s Next Growth Frontier

Urban India may feel saturated, but the reality on the ground tells a different story. Semi-urban and rural India—home to over 65% of the population—remains under-digitised, not over-served.

The next disruption may not come from a Bangalore-based app targeting millennials. Instead, it may come from a fintech firm working in Chhattisgarh, building voice-based banking interfaces for users who can’t read. Or a platform digitising dairy farmer incomes in Tamil Nadu, enabling them to build credit history via milk sale receipts.

Players like Jai Kisan (agri-finance), Kaarva (instant wage access), Sahamati (Account Aggregator ecosystem enabler), and Haqdarshak (last-mile access to government and financial services) are doing deep work in niches overlooked by “mainstream” fintechs.

Infra-Led Disruption: India’s Silent Revolution

Today, the India Stack is expanding—UPI 2.0, Digital Rupee (CBDC) pilots, ONDC for democratizing commerce, DEPA (Data Empowerment & Protection Architecture), and AA (Account Aggregator) are the building blocks for the next decade. What we're seeing is a transition from fintech products to fintech infrastructure—a movement from front-end to foundation.

These infra-led changes are subtle but massive in impact. They enable embedded finance, consent-driven data flows, interoperable lending, and new public-private collaboration models.

The New Investment Lens in Fintech: Lasting Impact

The capital narrative has also changed. Investors are no longer excited by the tenth neobank with a prettier dashboard. Rather, they're deeply interested in:

• Verticalized fintech (e.g., healthcare finance, ESG-focused credit, InsurTech)

• RegTech (compliance-as-a-service)

• Infra plays that power embedded finance (e.g., Setu, M2P Fintech, Signzy)

• AI in underwriting and fraud detection

There’s also a growing appetite for sustainable models—those catering to the underserved populations, aligned with regulatory priorities, and building long-term trust.

So, Is There Room for Disruption?

Yes. But not in the obvious places.

The future disruptor may not win awards for downloads or UI. It might not even have a brand that consumers recognize. But it will be the enabler—the stack that makes new credit models work, the bridge that connects policy to implementation, the silent infra powering the next 100 million users.

It’s a market in flux, not in decline.

India’s fintech story is far from over—it’s simply at the verge of another breakthrough. The real question isn’t about disruption—it’s about direction. Will the next wave of fintech leaders look beyond crowded categories and urban comfort zones to solve real, systemic problems at scale?

Because in Indian fintech, the gold rush may be over—but the real mining has just begun.

Authored by Soumi Bhattacharya

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