Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged the Reserve Bank of India to bolster the country’s digital rupee platform and boost both wholesale and retail central bank digital currencies.
Addressing the Global Fintech Fest here, FM Sitharaman said the central bank should “sharpen capability with digital rupee.”
Reflecting on the theme of GFF, the finance minister warned THAT Artificial Intelligence acts as “a double-edged sword” as it helps “detect and perpetrate fraud.”
The seventh edition of the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 was conducted in Mumbai from September 8-11 with the theme “Potential to Impact: Agentic AI, Tokenisation, Quantum – Trusted, Connected, Global Systems for Inclusive Finance.”
FM Sitharaman lauded India’s growth leveraging its demographic dividend. “From building the world’s most powerful digital public infrastructure with UPI processing billions of transactions, to standing tall as the fastest-growing major economy and breaking frontiers in space exploration, India is experiencing its demographic dividend in real time,” the minister said.
FM Sitharaman reminded financial regulators, competition authorities, data-protection authorities and cyber-security agencies to have a “clear understanding of their respective responsibilities and a reliable mechanism for coordination.”
The minister said that financial activities should not escape appropriate oversight merely because it sits at the boundary between sectors or is delivered through a technology platform rather than a conventional financial institution.
“It is our responsibility to build the right guardrails so that greater speed also builds greater trust. Efficiency and safety should not be competing objectives; good institutional design must make them mutually reinforcing,” the minister said.
“We all collectively need to ensure that innovation expands efficiency without bringing new forms of systemic fragility. AI may assist judgment, but responsibility must remain human and institutional,” FM Sitharaman added.
