Description
The global rise of financial technology, or fintech, has profoundly transformed relations between finance, regulation, and citizenship. With investments soaring from USD 9 billion in 2010 to over USD 200 billion in 2021, fintechs have become central to financial inclusion agendas, particularly in the Global South. In India, home to 25 percent of the global fintech client base, government policies have actively promoted fintech adoption as a means to expand credit access without traditional banking infrastructures. Yet, as fintechs proliferate, they reconstitute state authority through new regulatory arrangements. This paper investigates how fintechs reshape state regulation under India’s emerging regime of “self-regulation,” wherein industry bodies, rather than state agencies, govern financial practices. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with fintech regulators with interviews and participant observation among 50 fintech borrowers in Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata, this paper examines how this regulatory transformation affects borrowers’ experiences, accountability, and gendered vulnerabilities. By tracing the cross-scalar politics of fintech regulation, the paper argues that the digitalization of credit reconfigures state-society relations, making citizens increasingly responsible for their own welfare through market participation.
