Fintech startup deals in India surpassed those in China for the previous quarter, with 23 fintech deals during the second quarter of 2019, a media report said.

According to a Mint report, China had marginally higher investments at $375 million during the period compared to the $350 million in India. The report added that China saw deals drop to a new five-quarter low of 15 deals, down 81 percent from Q2 of 2018.

Fintech dealmaking is expected to continue at a strong pace in India, with at least 3-4 large deals underway, Mint said.

India’s fintech investments grew 27 percent from $286 million in the January-March to $350 million in April-June, said The Times of India report. China’s quarterly investments saw a sharp fall in the January-March quarter, dropping from $1.8 billion in the previous quarter to $231 million in the April-June quarter, the report added.

The fintech market in India is likely to expand to $31 billion in 2020, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had said in May. India is one of the fastest-growing fintech markets globally, he had said. Kant said that India is the only country in the world with over a billion mobile connections and biometrics, providing enough scope for penetration of fintech technology.

"The Indian fintech ecosystem is the third-largest in the globe. $6 billion investments have already happened in fintech market in the country in the last three to four years," Kant had said.

Noting that unlike China where all data is owned by Alibaba and the US where data is owned by Google and Facebook, Kant said, data in India is owned by the government.

With fintech innovations and their adoptions by the financial sector entities growing at a frenetic pace, the Reserve Bank is strengthening its surveillance framework.

In April, Governor Shaktikanta Das said the central bank was aligning its framework to help the market intermediaries provide financial access to the bottom-of-the-pyramid.

"In view of the growing significance of fintech innovations and their growing interface with the financial sector entities, RBI is strengthening its surveillance framework," Das had said.

Fintech adoption rate has risen to an average of 64 percent this year, with emerging markets like China and India leading the way, according to a report by Ernst & Young (EY).

In its report titled 'Global FinTech Adoption Index 2019', EY says emerging markets like China and India (87 percent adoption rate) led the charts, followed by Russia and South Africa (82 percent).

Among developed markets, Netherlands (73 percent), the UK (71 percent) and Ireland (71 percent) saw high adoption rates, it added. In markets like Chile, France and Japan, trust emerged as the only factor for not choosing a fintech challenger over traditional financial institutions.

With agency inputs

Updated Date: August 16, 2019 12:55:05 IST

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