Digital currency has a very strong usage: Saugata Bhattacharya

Mumbai, February 18, 2022: Mumbai, India’s financial capital, today witnessed the second micro experience of India’s largest - Fintech Festival India - organized by Constellar Exhibitions (a subsidiary of TEMASEK and Singapore Press Holdings which organizes Singapore FinTech Festival) and supported by Niti Aayog and six central government ministries.
 
Speaking at the conference on cryptos and digital currency, Saugata Bhattacharya, Executive Vice-President & Chief Economist, Axis Bank said, “Cryptos are basically gold on steroids but there are certain characteristics which needs to be discouraged. Digital currency has a very strong usage. It will be a powerful replacement of cash. Payment will be made only with the delivery of product.”
 
Differentiating between CBDC and Virtual Digital Assets, Sarmad Nazki, Chief Financial Officer, CoinSwitch said, “They both have very different objectives and use cases. In case of CBDC you could think of CBDC being a digitization of the bank note that you carry with you today. India has made a lot of progress in digital payments. Today even though you do digital payment (UPI), there is still underline physical cash in the system that represents the transaction. CBDC takes physical cash out of the equation and becomes part of the overall currency in circulation. It has a very different purpose and one key benefit that comes out it is reduces the cost of management. Today there are some estimates where 15-17 percent on 100 rupee note. The value is spent over a period of 4 year of lifecycle.”
 
Taking about India’s BNPL landscape, Richa Mukherjee, Member Face, Director Public Policy & Corporate Affairs, Pay U India said, “BNPL market is expected to reach 45-50 billion dollar by 2026 from the present 3 and a half billion dollar which is targeting 15X growth and the users are expected to rise to 8200 million customers  from 10 million customers by 2026’’
 
“In India BNPL is replacing credit card. BNPL will be the first form or alternate form of credit in India. More of smaller ticket size and shorter duration is where we will see many Indians trying credit card for the first time. Today in India, around 50-55 million credit cards are issued to around 30-35 million Indian and in contrast to that around 300 million Indians are paying digitally”, added Upansana Taku, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Mobikwik.
 
The daylong conference in Mumbai was also attended by some well-known stalwarts such as  Sabyasachi Goswami, Chief Business Officer, Perfios; Gaurav Hinduja, Co-founder & Managing Director, Capital Float; Siddharth Dhamija, Chief Growth Officer, Signzy; Sorabh Bhandari, Founder & Director, Riskcovry; Pranshu Diwan, Senior Director, OLA INSURE amongst others.
 
Constellar Exhibitions announced that in view of the current pandemic situation, the company has decided to host the Fintech Festival India 2022 Main event in two formats. A digital edition will be held from 1st to 3rd March, 2022. There will no longer be physical or in-person engagements in this March edition. This will be followed by the Physical Edition of the main event from 20th to 22nd July, 2022 at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.
 
Fintech Festival India is the country’s largest FinTech confluence. It will witness participation from over 500 Indian and global leaders and 12,000+ delegates. FFI will see participation from Brazil, Israel, UK, Russia, Canada, Finland, Japan, and Singapore among others.
 
The conferences are being supported by Government of India’s Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Ministry of Small & Medium Enterprise (MSME), The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Ministry of Commerce and Industry), Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited ( A Government of India Enterprise – Under Ministry of Information & Broadcasting) and Startup India (Department for promotion of Industry and Internal Trade & Invest India). It has also received support from the Government of Tamil Nadu, Government of Karnataka and Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT).
 
Fintech Festival India is being conducted in physical and digital format through 10 Micro Experience Conferences in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Gift City (Ahmedabad) and Pune.

In addition to the government, FFI which aims to unleash the power of FinTech across the country, has also drawn interest from industry including Indian insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) and World Trade Centre Mumbai among others.