India’s PM launches fintech API exchange in Singapore

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched API Exchange (APIX), an online marketplace and sandbox for fintech-related APIs, at the Singapore Fintech Festival today.

Developed by the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network – a group headed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the ASEAN Bankers Association, and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation – APIX will allow fintech businesses and financial services providers to discover potential partners.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi / Photo credit: Government of the Russian Federation

Delivering the conference’s first-ever keynote address by a sitting head of government, Modi told attendees that APIX would facilitate collaboration between startups and other enterprises in India, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the world, helping to drive financial innovation and inclusion.

The Indian premier said that fintech has “brought into the mainstream, those that were on the margins.”

Since Modi’s government was elected in 2014, India has been embracing tech-based solutions to solve the issues of its massive “underbanked” citizenry, and the lack of access to finance faced by its micro, small, and medium-sized businesses.

“With the power of fintech and the reach of digital connectivity […] financial inclusion has become a reality for 1.3 billion Indians,” he said, referring to Delhi’s sometimes controversial Aadhar project aimed at creating digital IDs for all of its citizens.

“We have generated more than 1.2 billion biometric identities [with] Aadhar in just a few years. In three years, we have opened 330 million new bank accounts. These are 33o million sources of identity, dignity, and opportunity,” he added.

Indian enterprises are also benefiting from the fintech boom, Modi claimed. It has “helped us extend 145 million loans for small entrepreneurs [worth] US$90 billion. Nearly 75 percent of these loans have gone to women,” he said.

Modi also pitched India as an investment destination, to attract both fintech-focused VCs and startups looking to scale.

“India faces diverse circumstances and challenges. Our solutions must also be diverse,” he said. “India’s vast market can enable fintech products to achieve scale, reduce risks and costs, and go global.”

The prime minister also threw in a joke for tech types, suggesting that the zeitgeist isn’t lost on him.

“I have heard [that] to increase your VC funding by 10 percent, tell your investors you run a platform, not a regular business,” he said. “If you want to increase your VC funding by 20 percent, tell the investors that you are operating in the fintech space. But if you really want the investors to empty their pockets, tell them that you are using blockchain!”