Four days of Indian fintech, in the words of the people who were there
Curated on eChai, a day at a time.
Global Fintech Fest 2026 ran at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai from 8 to 11 September, the seventh edition, organised by the Payments Council of India, the Fintech Convergence Council and NPCI. The 8th was invitation-only.
Narendra Modi opened it and asked for four things: UPI's global footprint widened, fintech taken beyond payments into pensions and insurance, a Fintech Consumer Protection Index that does not yet exist, and agentic AI, tokenisation and quantum treated as the next frontier. The RBI Governor gave the welcome address and published the text.
Away from the stage the week had already started. People had been flying in since the weekend, side events were filling up faster than the sessions, booth numbers were going out, and NPCI's work on a protocol that would let AI agents pay had been reported two days early. One post noticed that crypto was not one of the three pillars, and the replies to it were the only real argument of the day.
This page is what people posted, in the order they posted it.
Before it opened
The week starts before the doors do. People book flights and say so, side events fill up, booth numbers go out, and one real piece of news lands two days early.
Reported two days before the doors opened, and it frames the whole week: NPCI is said to be preparing a protocol that would let AI agents pay on someone's behalf. Agentic AI is one of the three pillars GFF is built around this year, and this is the plumbing underneath it.
Global Fintech Fest opens in Mumbai this week (Sep 8–11). Reports say NPCI is preparing a Unified Agent Protocol so AI agents can make small UPI payments under user-set limits, building on UPI Circle and Reserve Pay. Liability rules will decide trust.
Nikhil Kumar co-founded Setu, which was acquired by Pine Labs. He is bringing an agent he calls Saki, which is the pillar arriving as a thing somebody actually built rather than a panel topic.
Looking to meet BFSI folks from banks, NBFCs, insurers, payments, risk and compliance. Especially anyone thinking about voice fraud, re KYC, identity and deepfake risk.
Tokenisation is the second of the three pillars, and this is a custody company saying digital assets are now part of the mainstream fintech conversation rather than beside it.
The parallel programme: the sundowners, the breakfasts, the dinners and the soirees that run alongside the sessions and, by common account, are where most of the week actually happens. A standing part rather than a day's business, because it runs all week.
"Some of the best GFF conversations won't happen at GFF." Said while announcing a side event, so read it with that in mind, but it is also the honest description of a week where 450 sessions compete with the corridor outside them.
@GffFintechfest begins tomorrow, and it grows bigger and broader every year.
But for the first time in the 3 years I've attended the GFF, as I attend for the 4th time, I wanted to start with something to bring the Leaders together.
Hosting a Leadership Dinner tomorrow at 7 PM in BKC, Mumbai, and it's an invite-only dinner for CXOs, VCs, bankers, and Senior Leaders from Corporates.
Thanks to @VaaniHQ and @TransBnkIndia for co-hosting and partnering with me on such short notice.
🚨It’s fintech season. Team Startup Policy Forum will be in Mumbai this week hosting three high-impact engagements
📍Fintech Baithak: India’s leading founders talk to us about the future of fintech.
📍Fintech Table: An evening of conversations and connections, where we bring the startup ecosystem together over dinner.
📍Markets & Macros Baatcheet with Ridham Desai, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley. In a week when IPOs are back in action, a closed-knit group of founders sits down to talk GDP, the rupee, FPI flows, IPOs, and the future of new-age listed companies.
All three are invite-only, closed-door sessions, open only to SPF members and guests.
I’m pleased to share that I’ll be speaking at Fintech Sundowner: Decoding the Agentic Future, hosted by LF Decentralized Trust India Chapter × Road to DevCon India during GFF Week in Mumbai
Request to join: https://luma.com/u9eclpg2
#HyperledgerBesu #Ethereum #LFDecentralizedTrust
A list of nine side events, compiled by an attendee rather than by the organisers. It is the most useful single post of Day 1 for anyone actually going.
If you’re heading to Mumbai for @GffFintechfest and already figuring out what to do after the first hectic day.. then we might have a good plan for you 👀
We’re hosting an intimate Leadership Dinner in BKC on 8th September, bringing together CXOs, founders, VCs, HNIs, bankers, and corporates for an evening with Good Food, Drinks and Interesting Conversations.
📍 BKC, Mumbai (location will be shared post RSVP)
📅 8th September | 7 PM onwards
🤝 Invite-only
If you’re going to GFF and this sounds like your kind of evening, RSVP so we can plan better.
A soiree for BFSI leaders, run by a voice-AI company. Almost none of the parallel programme is announced by GFF itself, so a post like this is the only record that it happened.
This week Mumbai hosts Global Fintech Fest, the biggest yearly meetup for banks, regulators and fintech builders in India 🇮🇳
our cofounder @vedantutage03 is there for it as DashX builds the stablecoin rails for Indian businesses to get paid from anywhere and settle straight into INR
If that's your world too, reply or DM and let’s catch up
Landed in Mumbai. ✈️
Heading to @IIMAVentures today for a conversation on fintech partnerships.
Curious what actually makes bank × fintech partnerships work in India.
#GFF2026
If you’re into fintech, marketing, or AI, let’s meet and chat about how AI search is changing discovery and becoming a new acquisition layer for brands.
His own account of what he asked for, which is the version worth keeping: around forty accounts reported this speech on Day 1 and almost all of them were restating this post.
“Agentic AI, tokenisation, quantum — such technologies are opening doors to new possibilities in the financial sector,” PM Narendra Modi said at Global Fintech Fest 2026. He called for top-notch cybersecurity, ethical data protection standards, a stronger fintech regulator-industry innovation ecosystem and a consumer protection index for transparent company ratings.
The Governor's welcome address, with the full text attached as a PDF rather than summarised. It is the primary source for what the RBI said on the day.
दिनांक 8 सितंबर 2026 को ग्लोबल फिनटेक फेस्ट 2026 के उद्घाटन सत्र में आरबीआई गवर्नर द्वारा स्वागत संबोधन।
Welcome Remarks by RBI Governor in the Inaugural Session of Global FinTech Fest 2026 on September 8, 2026.
https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Speeches/PDFs/GFF08092026ED1620550D9C47A3A71604B25C3601D9.PDF
The asks and the numbers, taken one reporter at a time. Around forty accounts carried this speech on Day 1, most of them saying the same sentence; these are the six that each say something different.
The instruction underneath the speech, and the one that matters most to anybody building here: stop competing on payments, go and do credit, savings, insurance and pensions.
Fintech companies should increasingly focus on non-payment financial services, including expanding access to credit, savings, insurance and pension products, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai.
#WATCH | PM Modi At GFF 2026: “India’s 7.8% Growth Amid Global Turmoil Gives Confidence To The World”
Addressing the Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, PM Narendra Modi highlights India’s 7.8% GDP growth in Q1 FY27, saying the performance amid global uncertainties, oil price shocks and supply-chain disruptions reflects the country’s resilience.
From 18 billion+ monthly transactions to the next frontier of intelligent finance.
Alongside #GFF2026, CNBC-TV18 Soiree: UPI Decade – The Intelligence Era gathers the key minds shaping the next billion users and reinventing how India pays.
Swipe through to see the leaders decoding the shift from simple transactions to connected digital ecosystems, embedded commerce, and AI-driven experiences:
Amitabh Kant, Former CEO, NITI Aayog
Vikas Bansal, CEO, Amazon Pay
Sharath Bulusu, Sr Director, Product Management, Google Pay & Wallet
Vikash Jalan, COO Consumer Payments, Paytm
Date: Thursday, 10th September 2026
Time: 5:00 PM onwards
Tune in to: CNBC-TV18
In association with Karix, @wizzmonifs , @amazonpay , and Sofitel Mumbai BKC.
PM Modi at Global Fintech Fest: UPI is a 'civilisational story,' echoing French President Macron's remark. This highlights the immense global recognition and transformative impact of India's digital payment infrastructure. #UPI #Fintech #IndiaTech
PM Modi's direct endorsement at a global event, coupled with recalling Macron's 'civilisational story' comment, isn't just rhetoric. It's a clear signal of UPI's strategic importance for India and its growing international acceptance. For fintech players and governments worldwide, this validates UPI as a blueprint for public digital infrastructure, demonstrating its potential for massive scale and impact beyond just payments.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for the creation of a Fintech Consumer Protection Index to promote greater transparency and accountability across the sector.
Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, Modi said the index could provide a transparent basis for rating fintech companies on consumer protection standards.
Global Fintech Fest 2026 | PM Modi calls for expanding UPI’s role beyond payments to areas such as pensions and insurance
“It's the right time for us to ‘carpe diem’ on this opportunity...” — Ajay Rajan of Protean eGov Technologies on need to come up with innovative products, importance of starting retirement planning early, highlighting the need for greater collaboration across the fintech ecosystem
The three pillars are agentic AI, tokenisation and quantum. One post noticed what is missing from that list, and the replies became the only real argument of the day. The last entry is GFF's own, tagging four crypto exchanges.
Posted before the speech, and it turned out to be right. The three pillars were named from the stage and crypto was not among them, which for an industry that spent the previous week in the news is the absence worth noticing.
Three words open Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai today: agentic AI, tokenisation, quantum. Crypto is not one of them.
PM Modi addresses it, RBI Governor and SEBI Chairman speak. Indian crypto spent all of last week on two of those three.
#WazirX #GFF2026 #CryptoIndia
https://www.ciol.com/news/pm-modi-global-fintech-fest-2026-agentic-ai-tokenisation-12404876
GFF's own post, tagging four crypto exchanges into a session on an AML framework for virtual digital assets. Crypto is not one of the three pillars and it is on the programme anyway, which is a fuller answer than the speech gave.
We look forward to bringing together regulators, financial institutions and other stakeholders for this important conversation at FinSight Global Fintech Fest 2026.
Booth numbers, demos and the first launches. This is the part of GFF that has nothing to do with the main stage, and it is where most people spend the week.
The loudest non-political post of Day 1 by a wide margin, and it is an AI company rather than a payments one, which is roughly the point of this year's programme.
FinSight happening as a key component of the GFF 2026, convened by ARIFAC with FIU-IND in an observer capacity, brings together leading voices from the financial services ecosystem for a discussion on:
“Beyond Compliance: Building a Resilient AML/CFT Framework for the Global VDA”
A packed day ahead - from the PhonePe × Visa product launch to conversations on AI, programmable money, the future of merchant payments and a decade of building for a billion Indians.
Catch PhonePe founders Sameer Nigam & Rahul Chari , alongside our leadership team, as they share what’s next.
23 startups. One GIFT City Pavilion. A whole lot of fintech innovation.
Meet the innovators from the GIFT City ecosystem at Global Fintech Fest 2026, as startups across fintech, tech and financial services come together to showcase their ideas, solutions and possibilities.
IRCTC's chairman on a fintech stage, talking about new revenue lines. A railway ticketing company is one of the largest payments surfaces in the country, which is the kind of thing GFF is for.
In today’s India Edition, Menaka Doshi looks at the problems created by the RBI’s dollar bonanza and Sidhartha Shukla explores the big questions facing the Global Fintech Fest. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-09-08/india-s-dollar-deluge-creates-a-problem-of-plenty?taid=6aa04298c7918d000143ae30&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Mumbai Police detained two men after a security scare at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre ahead of PM Modi’s scheduled Global Fintech Fest visit. https://www.indiabrains.com/politics/news/gunman-with-fake-id-at-pm-modi-s-mumbai-event
Fake PMO ID, armed bodyguard & access to Mumbai's Jio World Plaza a day before PM Modi's Global Fintech Fest visit.
Was a 24-year-old drone-tech graduate, #RohanParekh, running a fraud, or was he himself conned by individuals posing as PMO officials? One accused has been arrested, while another remains wanted.
Satya Pathak
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