The journey commenced with the access part, where millions of citizens were connected to the formal financial system through Aadhar, Jan Dhan, UPI, and most importantly the digital connectivity to support this access.
The second phase was scale. Making digital payments mainstream did take a decade or so, however, they have now become a part of everyday life despite the challenges posed by sheer volume of these transactions in India. The translation volumes have surged 12000 times in the last decade, to a point where India claims a share in world’s real-time digital transitions.
The process is entering the third and the most important phase now, trust! This is an ‘invisible’ milestone to achieve, but far more fundamental than what has been accomplished thus far.
This exactly is the central idea of what Suresh Sethi, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa, will be exploring at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) in Mumbai, to be held between September 8 and 11. The fest has been organised for a time where the industry has an economy in sight, where payments, commerce, and financial services are increasingly connected and intelligent.
A seasoned financial leader Sethi has over three decades of global experience, driving transformation and innovation. He has been engaging with regulators and policymakers to advise on digital payments and financial inclusion strategies, apart from shaping policy discussions on data privacy, cybersecurity, and consumer protection.
His expertise and contributions in the field make him an apt choice to take the “trust discussion” forward at the GFF, which is being organised with the core theme of “Agentic AI | Tokenisation | Quantum. Trusted, connected, Global Systems for Inclusive Finance” and will have focus pivoted around building a resilient and inclusive financial ecosystem, where intelligence meets trust at a global scale.
What makes trust important?
India’s digital payment ecosystem is of an extraordinary scale. The scale can be fathomed from the fact that in August-2026 alone, there have been recorded transactions executed in the country, excluding credit/debit to the same account.
This ecosystem is exponentially expanding, and the “access” question might not be relevant now. What is of utmost importance is the question whether the users trust the systems through which these digital interactions take place?
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes this question all the more relevant, given that AI is reshaping financial services, in a way that still remains incomprehensible to most of the citizens. And it is just the beginning. AI-enabled commerce is progressing in a direction where ‘agents’ search, compare, transact, and potentially make decisions on behalf of both consumers as well as businesses.
While this AI-led transformation is a gateway to growth, it also brings along questions of authenticity, accountability, fraud protection, and data security-adding more emphasis to the trust question.
Sethi, with his deep expertise in all of these domains, will map why in such an environment we cannot solely rely on the authorisation at the end of the transaction, and why it is important to have trust embedded throughout the entire digital journey-including identity establishment, authentication, risk detection, credential verification/protection, and a fool proof movement of the transactions.
Moving forward:
Technology is evolving, and its adaptation to the financial systems makes an interesting case where the requisite trust can be achieved, despite it being an invisible entity and the immense scale of the Indian financial ecosystem.
Tokenisation, among emerging technologies, has the potential to help in protecting sensitive credentials. This technology replaces credentials with secure tokens, leaving them invisible and inaccessible to fraudsters.
Risk intelligence and authentication can help spurious behaviour as well, while cybersecurity becomes increasingly important. Interoperability becomes critical as well, in the present scenario given that the transactions do not take place in a vacuum or in simpler words within a single bank, fintech or a payment platform. Seamless interaction between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and technology providers has become more important than ever.
India has already proved a point by expanding the digital infrastructure to population level, and it is the next logical step for the country to add that trust layer at this scale by embracing the newer models of financial interactions/security. India needs to build a system that is not only more connected but also secure, resilient, and confident.
Making digital payments trustworthy by default is what will be at the heart of discussions at GFF as the fest brings together policymakers, financial institutions, fintech companies, and tech-leaders from across the world.
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