Not long ago, I remember booking a last-minute flight online and being uncertain if my ticket would be confirmed. Payments, until a few years back, took ages to process and waiting for transactions to clear was a routine part of life. Today, those same payments take milliseconds to go through. The difference between days and seconds is the measurement of technology’s impact on India’s fintech journey.

In 2025, the rate of change that we’ll see in fintech adoption and inclusion will only increase. How we interact with money will irrevocably combine with how we interact with technology.
As we examine the direction in which the ‘tech’ in fintech shapes up in the coming year, one critical topic emerges up top- security. Each day, we wake up to new cases of people losing hard-earned money to scamsters online. One report claims that in just the first 9 months of 2024, India lost close to 11,000 crores via cyber scams. Today, AI-driven fraud detection is no longer a good to have for fintech products but a necessity.

What will change, however, is how we use AI for fraud detection. One relatively underutilised area is AI that scans for pattern recognition in behavioural analytics, which analyses how users interact with technology. For example each one of us has a unique way of typing or using the mouse on a laptop. AI can be trained to track such user behaviour to detect anomalies, flagging fraudulent activity before any financial losses occur. On the back end too fintech companies are increasingly adopting zero trust architecture. This means that even for internal teams who build fintech, every access request to vital information has to be verified, thereby doubling down on security and protecting against hackers.

Identity verification is another area where we’ll see new product innovation in 2025 for increased security. The building blocks of conducting identity verification through tech are not new. However, we can expect newer products that make the experience more seamless for users and cost-effective for merchants while still being compliant. The goal in 2025 for the fintech ecosystem is to ensure the time between someone wanting to accept online payments for their business and a customer paying them feels like nothing.
As people become accustomed to faster payments on the whole, their expectations from payment products will change too. In 2025 a great payment experience won’t be defined only by success rates and up times. It’ll move to how much personalisation you can give users in their payments.

One study claims that 72% of users think a product is more useful when it is tailored to their needs. For fintech this opens the door for customisations from multi-currency wallets to personalised forex rates. This level of hyper-personalisation also goes a long way in building trust, especially with young consumers, who have spent most of their adult lives interacting with digital platforms.

To these users, mobile payments may simply be routine, giving fintech companies the opportunity to explore new ways of integrating payments beyond smartphones. One promising use case is embedding payments within the Internet of Things (IoT). Devices like smartwatches, smart refrigerators, and virtual assistants can be leveraged for this as fintech integrations advance. According to a study, the autonomous IoT payments market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 42.4% from 2025 to 2037.

This larger focus on user-centric features is also driving deeper structural changes within fintech tech teams. The sector-wide push for open finance is one such example. A by-product of this will be increased API standardisation that helps third-party developers create new products while still ensuring security and compliance. Such a trend democratises innovation and good tech. In essence, it will lead to flexible fintech products that are easier to integrate into platforms that we use in everyday life - be it food ordering apps, ride-hailing apps or e-commerce websites.

As businesses grow in 2025, international players are realising the potential of catering to the Indian market. Simultaneously, Indian entities want to take their business global as well. The result is a robust cross-border payment ecosystem that is waiting for disruption.

While domestic payments in India have set new benchmarks for speed, cost-effectiveness and efficiency, cross-border payments traditionally have faced a few challenges. Different modes of cross-border payments have different processing times and can be costly with several parties involved in the transfer. Compliance and procedural aspects of cross-border payments are also crucial to get right, but simultaneously, can be time-consuming. In 2025, we’ll see more innovation from fintech companies in addressing these challenges. Through a mix of automation that secures compliance needs, fintech companies can offer a better cross-border payment experience to customers with more transparency in forex pricing.

When we consider the magnitude of digital payments in India, the progress we have achieved in the last few years is staggering. Indians today make 46% of all digital payments in the world. The next chapter in India’s fintech journey will see the focus shift squarely to creating better user experiences - whether that is in making fintech more secure, accessible or personalised. As one of India’s most successful tech exports, fintech companies in 2025 have the opportunity to redefine global standards in how consumers interact and use fintech impactfully.