From UPI ubiquity in villages to multilingual digital interfaces for merchants, India’s fintech revolution is shifting from access to real empowerment, where technology meets trust and local relevance. With regulatory strength and mobile-first design as catalysts, players like plutos ONE are reimagining how everyday platforms, schools, CSCs, and kirana stores become gateways to inclusive financial services. Shared Rohit Mahajan, Managing Partner & Founder of plutos ONE, in an exclusive conversation with Vishwas Sinha of Elets News Network (ENN). Edited excerpts:
The digital payments sector in India has seen exponential growth over the past decade. How do you perceive the current landscape of digital payments and fintech in India, and what are the most significant shifts you’ve observed recently?
The digital payments landscape in India has transformed faster than ever before, and it’s largely due to the strong policy structure in place, fintech innovation, as well as the mobile-first approach of the country. What once was an urban trend has become a national phenomenon. Over the last 10 years, digital payments have advanced from simple mobile recharges and peer-to-peer payments to complex platforms needing real-time payments, credit issuance, and scale access to financial services. We have witnessed another major shift, with UPI becoming mainstream – easier payment options have completely changed the way consumers and merchants transact. Financial services are now part of non-financial platforms, such as social commerce apps and retail chains, creating embedded financial ecosystems. In recent years, plutosONE has also experienced greater demand for seamless, interoperable, and trust-based payments across all sectors. There has been a shift from cash-based ecosystems to someone still linked to a bank account, even in rural communities – this is due to the effective policy implementation of digital finance literacy and interoperability structures such as BBPS. India’s impact on real-time payments has set the global standard. The opportunity to broaden the digital horizon is where not only large cities do citizens experience quick, easy, secure, and inclusive financial access, but every citizen (irrespective of their geography) can similarly access inclusive financial visibility seamlessly and securely. To do this, fintech players like yourselves need to be firmly settled in-between the regulatory expectations while being nimble and maintaining a focus on building a strong foundation to ensure we can create resilient and scalable infrastructures, which undertakes the monumental digital transition.
The Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) is at the heart of digital financial inclusion. In your view, what are the most critical innovations needed to accelerate BBPS adoption across semi-urban and rural India?
We are working on building new-age infrastructure with Bharat Connect, because fintech is no longer a support function—it’s the engine of financial inclusion and digital transformation for the common man in India.
Our AI-powered systems are redefining speed, compliance, and precision across the BBPS ecosystem. Our proprietary biller onboarding platform—the most advanced in the industry—drastically reduces integration timelines from weeks to days, ensuring error-free and compliant setups. We have a bold but achievable target: onboarding 50,000 merchants in the next year through automation and intelligent workflows.
By infusing AI into the very DNA of BBPS, we are optimising settlements, enhancing reliability, and delivering superior customer experiences. Our belief is simple: AI isn’t just relevant to fintech—it’s mission-critical for India’s next wave of scale and inclusion.
For banks, we’re transforming BBPS from a backend compliance requirement into a strategic customer engagement engine. Through real-time analytics, vernacular interfaces, and plug-and-play APIs, we’re enabling banks to own the biller relationship, not just the transactions.
The new NBFC regulatory framework is reshaping the lending and payments ecosystem. How do you see NBFCs adapting to digital transformation, and what role do platforms like yours play in supporting this transition?
New NBFC regulations have created urgency and opportunity in the NBFC sector. NBFCs have a dual mandate now. NBFCs need to manage regulatory compliance at the same time as they are digitally transforming the way they do their business. Many NBFCs are now also re-inventing their business models from a traditional lender to a full-service financial services provider. plutosONE is enabling a simplified path of digital transformation by providing plug-and-play infrastructure for BBPS integration, digitising collection operations, and real-time reconciliation. Transformation is not just tech adoption; it involves rethinking the customers’ journey, which begins with onboarding & KYC and runs to repayment and the possibility of accessing support and service. We are also seeing a greater interest in co-lending and embedded finance models, especially with NBFCs that target underserved geographies. Digital transformation is being ignited with APIs, Cloud-Native and scalable Platforms which allow NBFCs to innovate without heavy CapEx investment. plutosONE has become a valued partner in the NBFC ecosystem by providing a strategic enabling role in this space that allows NBFCs to comply with RBI obligations while exceeding in speed, security, and scale. We intend to partner with large, medium, and small NBFCs to fully achieve all of the benefits and advantages of digital transformation: efficiencies, transparency, and reach in this next phase of fintech growth in India.
What are the primary challenges NBFCs face in digitising their operations, and how can industry partnerships and technology providers help overcome these hurdles?
Digital transformation is a necessity for NBFCs (Non-Banking Financial Companies) now. But the digital journey of NBFCs presents a myriad of challenges, including legacy systems, data silos, lack of technology talent, and at the operational level a resistance to change. There are still many NBFCs operating on paper-form driven processes and facilitating the introduction of digital solutions so as not to disrupt current processes, which can create a complicated balancing act. Additionally, rural and semi-urban NBFCs have connectivity issues & lower levels of digital literacy for both their field agents and their borrowers. This is where partnership and collaboration become important. At plutosONE we have found that working with NBFCs to co-create solutions to their specific challenges — whether those solutions are BBPS-based repayment systems or API-based dashboards — can expedite adoption. Industry partnerships can help bring innovative solutions, regulatory compliance, and cost-efficient ways of doing things to the NBFC. For example, with a multi-bank platform partner, we can access seamless backend integration into our platform, while with a fintech partner, we can access better analytics and fraud detection. Regulatory sandboxes or pilot programs for testing a specific solution in a safe/enclosed environment also help build confidence in NBFCs by reducing opportunities for risk when it comes to digitisation. In the context of being a technology enabler, plutosONE facilitates not just building the infrastructure, but also change management through ongoing training, support, and user facilitation. Ultimately, the success of any digital transformation journey depends on the technology being user-relevant, user-friendly, and supported with the right ecosystem of partners.
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PlutosONE has transitioned from a leading BBPS TSP to a payment infrastructure platform a What were the pivotal moments or strategies that enabled this transformation, and how did you navigate the challenges along the way?
PlutosONE experience of transitioning from a BBPS TSP to an embedded payment infrastructure platform has been driven by foresight, flexibility, and the ability to strategically diversify. While we’ve stabilised a BBPS Technology Service Provider designation with reliability and resilience, the shifting of gears began when we foresaw the next moves for some financial institutions and their customers. After launching Bharat Connect, we recognised and capitalised on increasing demand for integrated payments as a service in launching the Internet and Mobile Banking (IBMB) solutions with banks. Moving from being intersected with bill payment solutions into a larger scalable embedded payment infrastructure space solidified our position in the digital finance ecosystem in India as an enabler and a trusted payment infrastructure provider.
At the same time, we have made significant progress on Fastag and NCMC (National Common Mobility Card) issuance and have established relationships with leading banks. This development allowed us to transgress into high-value transaction layers and national mobility layers of services. Our evolution also tested our endurance as we had to deal with regulatory changes because of the pandemic, coordination with banks’ tech stack, and scaling ourselves to do all this while not imposing any non-compliance penalties. But through all this, the foundation of our strategy has always been to create collaboration over competition, using plug-and-play infrastructure to facilitate and enable rather than disrupt. Each pivot was done with one vision: building Bharat-centric
How is plutosONE enabling NBFCs to expand their reach and offer more inclusive financial services, especially to underserved segments?
NBFCs have quickly become key players in providing credit and financial services in the underserved areas of India. At plutosONE, we work with several of India’s largest NBFCs to drive seamless digital collections via BBPS, while adding operational efficiencies along with convenience for the customer. One of our biggest programs at scale is implementing collections through the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS). We are providing a standardised, interoperable, and real-time payment mechanism to multiple customer segments, right down to Tier 2 and 3 towns and rural belts. In fact, we are about to launch WhatsApp-based BBPS collections—a true accessibility breakthrough. We bring collection reminders, payment links, and instant help together, using WhatsApp to provide customers with ease. It is conversational AI meets digital payments, which reduces barriers for users with low digital skills or literacy. As a matter of fact, we are also delivering awareness and engagement campaigns around financial literacy and building digital trust for regional audiences.
By providing these tools to NBFCs, plutos ONE is not only helping NBFCs grow collections, but also we are helping them drive financial inclusion for millions of borrowers who have simpler repayment mechanisms, which will drive potentially new geographies for growth.
With the expansion of UPI and real-time payments, how do you envision the next phase of digital transaction experiences for both consumers and businesses in India?
India’s digital payment ecosystem is at a historic junction. In May 2025, UPI experienced over 18.6 billion transactions of ₹25.14 lakh crore. To go from 350 million users to 500 million in less than a year, UPI isn’t just an accepted payment mode; it’s a behavioral revolution. At Plutos ONE, we see the next phase of digital payments driven by deep integration, personalisation, and trust at scale. Through Bharat Connect, our infrastructure is creating critical real-time use cases like Bill Payments (BBPS), IBMB, and Bharat Connect B2B, sponsoring cross-border FX Retail solutions. We aren’t just seeing more digital transactions—we are seeing UPI become the de facto interface for trust, speed, and transparency for entities and consumers. For small merchants, daily wage earners, and students, UPI is beyond a payment—UPI is the practice of financial dignity. The expected introduction of MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) into UPI may put the vital inclusion-first ecosystem in jeopardy. We see any consideration as a cautionary exercise. The future is about building cost-effective, interoperable, and behaviorally aligned experiences, and plutosONE is ready to lead this next chapter with preparation and Bharat-first thinking.
Having founded and scaled a leading fintech platform, what advice would you offer to aspiring techpreneurs and digital payments specialists aiming to make a mark in India’s rapidly evolving financial ecosystem?
The fintech startup ecosystem in India leaves one with a mix of fear and anticipation and is a market full of opportunities, given that the market is largely driven by compliance, high-growth user acceptance, and different user personas (Metro tech-savvy millennials to first-time digital users in rural pockets of India). If I were to provide one piece of advice to an aspiring founder, it would be to recognize that compliance will be the truest foundation of your start-up. Don’t think of compliance as overly restrictive but as an organised path to establishing long-term trust and scalability. Secondly, direct your imaginations towards solutions to important problems and not simply following a trend, e.g., voice-based bill payments, offline first with UPI, etc The next breakout in Fintech will ultimately come from listening to Bharat! Lastly, do not compete with banks! Partner – banks have credibility, trust, and regulation on their side, you will be innovating on user experience, value-added service, and operations working in conjunction with the existing infrastructure.
Looking ahead, what is your vision for the future of digital payments and financial inclusion in India, and how do you see your company contributing to this mission?
At plutosONE we are on a clear mission: to make the digital payment experience ubiquitous, inclusive, and hyper-local. Financial inclusion cannot be a metro-centric story, and it needs to reach the heartlands of India, and we have built the infrastructure to make it possible. Over the next few years, we have set ourselves one of our biggest goals to onboard 1 lakh plus schools and colleges onto BBPS. This vertical involves the largest slice of payment-related offline payment categories (education payments, fee payments, exam payments, hostel payments, etc.) The digitisation of education payments will result in streamlining the process for institutions and reducing the friction for parents and students. To broaden the scope for digital payment usage, we are also leveraging Common Service Centers (CSCs) around the country to drive usage in rural / semi-urban belts when it comes to digital payments, especially utility payments, insurance payments, and loan repayments, bringing digital payments closer to a destination. Another area we are focused on is linguistic inclusion. We are building out multilingual BBPS interfaces through Bhashini, the government’s multilingual AI initiative. By leveraging Bhashini, we will build interfaces that enable a native language experience for users anywhere in the country, overcoming barriers of literacy, and ultimately enhancing the likelihood of ultimate adoption. Ultimately, plutosONE is working for Bharat, with every additional layer of infrastructure, every localised innovation, and every rural partnership we make. A future where digital dignity is a right, not a privilege, is a future we are building the rails to achieve.
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