Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that technology must be used for the public good and should not be weaponised. Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2025, Sitharaman noted that globally technology advancements are sometimes misused, which leads to questions about global progress due to technology weaponisation. She also launched the Foreign Currency Settlement System (FCSS) of GIFT International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). “It is important to constantly remind ourselves that technology cannot be in that sense truly mastered, but having obtained certain proprietary rights over some parts of it, we should refrain from weaponising it,” Sitharaman said. She said fintech in the country is not a niche urban convenience, it is a nationwide enabler of economic empowerment. “Fintech in India has again not merely digitised payments. It has democratised finance, has transformed financial access into a public good, empowering millions to save, invest, borrow, and insure themselves with dignity and transparency,” the minister said. The country’s fintech journey has transformed everyday payments into an invisible and inseparable habit, powered by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and digital public infrastructure. “In (the) span of a single decade, we have connected a population equivalent to that of the entire European Union (EU) to the formal banking system, opening over 56 crore Jan Dhan bank accounts,” she stated. India now ranks third in the world for the number of fintech companies and also leads in digital payment volumes, having processed over 18,580 crore UPI transactions worth Rs 261 lakh crore in 2024-25. FCSS launched While launching the Foreign Currency Settlement System (FCSS), Sitharaman said, the platform will serve as a payment system within IFSC, designed to settle transactions in foreign currencies on a real-time or near real-time basis. Currently, transactions in foreign currency by entities in IFSC are settled through the correspondent banking arrangements which are routed through different participants and multiple nostro banks. Such transactions are settled with a lag of up to 36-48 hours. The Foreign Currency Settlement System will be facilitating seamless and efficient settlement of foreign currency transactions within IFSC on a real-time basis. It will enhance liquidity management, operational resilience and ensure compliance with regulatory oversight under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act (PSS) by the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), she said. IFSCA is a unified authority for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in the IFSC. With the operationalisation of the FCSS, GIFT IFSC will join a select group of global financial centres, including Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Manila, that have the infrastructure to settle foreign currency transactions locally, Sitharaman added. India dominates real-time digital transactions Nearly half the world’s real-time digital transactions happen in India, with adoption rates of 87 per cent compared to a global average of 67 per cent, Sitharaman said. “Government has leveraged digitisation by introducing Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system for all its social welfare schemes, which has significantly boosted welfare efficiency by reducing subsidies and leakages, with savings of Rs 4.31 lakh crore and a 16-fold increase in beneficiary coverage between 2014 and 2024,” she said. The country’s Global Capability Center (GCC) landscape has evolved from cost-arbitrage hubs into high-value engineering, research and development (R&D) and innovation centers — particularly in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) domain, Sitharaman said.
