RBI governor urges fintechs to treat customer data as a fiduciary responsibility

At Global Fintech Fest, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra called on fintechs to strengthen consent-based data sharing and cyber resilience while expanding inclusive services. He also highlighted platforms including the Unified Lending Interface and Digital Payments Intelligence Platform.

— Source publishedThu, 10 Sept, 2026, 20:32 IST·First seen Thu, 10 Sept, 2026, 21:03 IST·Source Financial Express · BrandWagon

What happened

Reserve Bank of India · RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra urged Indian fintechs to safeguard customer data, use consent-based sharing, strengthen cyber resilience

Key facts

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Why this matters

Retailers and financial-services buyers should prioritize fintech partners with auditable consent frameworks and RBI-aligned security capabilities, particularly around ULI and payment-intelligence integrations.

What to watch

  • RBI circulars, supervisory actions or formal rules on consent management, customer-data sharing, cyber incident reporting and outsourcing.
  • Implementation milestones, participating institutions and transaction volumes for the Unified Lending Interface and Digital Payments Intelligence Platform.
  • RBI enforcement against fintechs, payment aggregators, digital lenders or regulated entities for data or cyber-control failures.
  • Changes in approval rates, fraud losses, chargebacks and abandonment for retail-linked BNPL, wallet and embedded-credit programs.
  • Major data breaches or phishing/fraud events that prompt stricter authentication or payment-flow requirements.
  • Audit customer-data flows across loyalty, payments, marketplace, BNPL, co-branded card and third-party app integrations in India.
  • Require fintech and payment partners to document consent capture, data-retention practices, breach response, localization exposure and cyber-resilience controls.
  • Prioritize privacy-preserving personalization and first-party data collection rather than dependence on cross-platform consumer profiling.
  • Model checkout and credit-conversion risk if consent refreshes, additional disclosures or tighter underwriting controls add customer friction.
  • Assess opportunities to integrate regulated lending and fraud-detection rails through bank-led or licensed fintech partnerships.