Second fintech SRO recognized as corporate bond tokenisation begins
The Reserve Bank of India announced the recognition of United FinTech Forum as the sector's second self-regulatory organisation and unveiled a corporate bond tokenisation initiative with SEBI at the Global Fintech Fest on September 21, 2026.
From retail scale to bond tokenisation
India recorded 280 billion digital transactions in FY2025-26, supported by 24 billion monthly Unified Payments Interface transactions.
Public inclusion programs reached 57 crore Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana accounts and over 85 crore micro-insurance policies.
At the Global Fintech Fest, the Reserve Bank of India recognized United FinTech Forum as the sector's second Self-Regulatory Organisation, following the first entity approved two years prior.
In collaboration with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the central bank also unveiled the tokenisation of corporate bonds settled through wholesale central bank digital currency, expanding earlier trials with Certificates of Deposit.
Fiduciary duty and systemic resilience
The central bank outlined key regulatory priorities, calling on fintechs to manage data as a fiduciary responsibility rather than a monetisable asset.
Firms scaling into systemic relevance must meet higher operational resilience standards, characterized as an obligation to be “too significant to be careless.”
Infrastructure rollouts include the Unified Lending Interface for credit delivery, the MuleHunter.ai fraud-detection platform, and the Q-SAFE committee on quantum resilience.
Discipline behind the digital showcase
India's payment scale is impressive, yet shifting to wholesale CBDC settlement reflects caution over systemic risks.
The warning against regulatory arbitrage signals that supervisory tolerance for unmonitored growth has ended.
Global adoption will ultimately require strict governance rather than sheer transaction volume.