Fintech has spread far and wide in India, banks need a counterattack

Banks aren't intuitively geared to handle the unique requirements of small businesses

Visit a mid-sized store in an Indian city, and you’d wonder if it exists to make any money. It might just as well be there to process transactions for half-a-dozen payment apps: PhonePe, Paytm, Google Pay, BharatPe, Amazon Pay and MobiKwik. Add up the merchants who have downloaded the digital services and the figure quickly reaches 80 million. A third of India’s 60 million-plus small businesses are using an average of four different platforms, according to Raman Khanduja, the chief executive officer of Mintoak, a Mumbai-based fintech.
 

“The neighborhood shopkeepers’ bandwidth is getting sucked into accepting money,” he says. “When