Sitharaman backs accountable fintech oversight, calls for wider CBDC pilots
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman welcomed RBI’s recognition of the Unified Fintech Forum as an SRO and urged light-touch but accountable regulation. She also called for further development of wholesale and retail CBDC pilots alongside SEBI’s tokenisation work.
What happened
Reserve Bank of India · Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged lighter but accountable fintech regulation, welcomed RBI recognition of the Unified Fintech
Key facts
- September 10
Why this matters
Retail and payments firms should prioritize partnerships or targets with SRO-aligned compliance capabilities, CBDC integration expertise, and tokenisation infrastructure.
What to watch
- RBI circular specifying the SRO's authority, audit requirements, enforcement process and relationship with existing regulated entities.
- Expansion in CBDC pilot user counts, merchant acceptance points, transaction-volume disclosures and offline-payment functionality.
- Government or RBI incentives for CBDC merchant acceptance, direct-benefit transfers or public-sector procurement settlement.
- SEBI rules or sandbox outcomes covering tokenised securities, settlement assets, custody and retail investor access.
- Evidence that CBDC payments offer merchants lower acceptance costs or faster settlement than UPI and card rails.
- New interoperability mandates involving CBDC wallets, UPI, bank deposits or payment aggregators.
- RBI to define supervisory expectations, reporting standards and membership obligations for the Unified Fintech Forum as an SRO.
- Payment firms and banks to seek inclusion in expanded retail and wholesale CBDC pilot cohorts, especially for offline payments, B2B settlement and programmable disbursements.
- SEBI tokenisation initiatives to prompt experimentation in tokenised money-market instruments, collateral and settlement workflows before consumer-facing tokenised retail products.
- Large retailers, marketplaces and quick-commerce platforms to test CBDC acceptance where incentives, government payments or supplier settlement economics are favorable.
- Payment aggregators to market compliance, fraud controls and data-governance capabilities as differentiation for enterprise merchants.