Management Practice Insights
Year: 2025, Volume: 3, Issue: Special Issue 1, Pages: 58-64
Original Article
Vidhu Shekhar 1, Sanjogita R 2
1 Assistant Professor in the Finance and Accounting department at SPJIMR
2 Doctoral research scholar at SPJIMR
Correspondence
Received Date:24 September 2024, Accepted Date:25 June 2025, Published Date:30 June 2025
The rapid growth of fintech in India has unlocked many opportunities, making banking services available to the underserved population. However, it has also exposed consumers to the risk of unfair lending practices, data misuse, and regulatory blind spots. Drawing from recent research by Brinda Sampat, Emmanuel Mogaji, Nguyen Phong Nguyen on fintech's unintended consequences, we critically examine these challenges and propose a digital fort to ensure ethical fintech growth in India, prioritising consumer protection and regulatory compliance.1 We define digital fort as a security and compliance architecture that combines technological infrastructure, data protection measures, and ethical business practices. This framework helps fintech developers, industry leaders, and policymakers in guarding the financial operations. It is also useful in defending against technical vulnerabilities and predatory practices.
1 Brinda Sampat, Emmanuel Mogaji, and Nguyen Phong Nguyen, 'The Dark Side of FinTech in Financial Services: A Qualitative Enquiry into FinTech Developers' Perspective', International Journal of Bank Marketing 42, no. 1 (1 January 2024): 38–65, https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-07-2022-0328.
2 Press Trust of India, 'Indian FinTech Industry Projected to Reach $420 Billion by 2029', Deccan Herald, n.d., https://www.deccanherald.com/business/economy/indianfintech-industry-projected-to-reach-420-billion-by-20293110668.
3 Press Information Bureau, 'Digital Transactions in India', Government of India, 8 February 2023, https://www.pib.gov.in/www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx? PRID=1897272. Authors' estimates.
4 Sandhya Keelery, 'India: Leading Digital Payment Usage Problems 2020' (1242353: Statista, 30 August 2024), https://www.statista.com/statistics/1242353/india-leadingdigital-payment-usage-problems/.
5 Reserve Bank of India, 'Annual Report of Ombudsman Scheme, 2023-24', Jaunuary 2025, https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationsView.aspx?id=23126#APP1 3.
6 George Matthew, 'Usurious Pricing by NBFCs, Apps: Why the RBI Acted against 4 Entities and How Borrowers End up Paying Excessive Interest', The Indian Express, 19 October 2024, https://indianexpress.com/article/business/rbi-nbfc-loanapps-excessive-interest-9626739/.
7 Siddharth Vishwanath, Dhruv Gupta, and Priyanjali Moulik, 'Beyond the Cloud- Navigating FinTech Cyber Threats and Fortifying Defences', Whitepaper (pwc, 2024), https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/consulting/beyond-thecloud-navigating-fintech-cyber-threats-and-fortifying-defencesv3.pdf.
8 Keng-Boon Ooi et al., 'Guest Editorial: The Dark Side of FinTech: Unintended Consequences and Ethical Consideration of FinTech Adoption', International Journal of Bank Marketing 42, no. 1 (1 January 2024): 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-02-2024-619.
<P>9 Sampat, Mogaji, and Nguyen, 'The Dark Side of FinTech in Financial Services: A Qualitative Enquiry into FinTech Developers' Perspective'. </P>
<P>10 Competition and Markets Authority, 'Update on Open Banking', Press Release, 1 October 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/update-on-openbanking. </P>
<P>11 Capital.com, 'What Is Sesame Credit', Online Investments, 24 December 2018, https://capital.comlearn/glossary. </P>
<P>12 National Payments Corporation of India, 'Unified Payments Interface (UPI) Product Statistics', n.d., https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-statistics. </P>
<P>13 Chris Holmes, 'The Rise and Fall of P2P Lending in China: By Chris Holmes', Finextra Research (blog), 10 April 2019, https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/17107/the-rise-and-fallof-p2p-lending-in-china. </P>
<P>14 Reserve Bank of India, 'Digital Lending Guidelines' (RBI, Government of India, 14 February 2023), https://www.rbi.org.in/commonman/English/Scripts/FAQs.asp x?Id=3413. </P>
© 2025 Published by SPJIMR. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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