The Union Budget 2026 has reinforced the government’s commitment to strengthening India’s digital financial backbone, with targeted incentives for UPI and RuPay, a sharper focus on credit quality, and renewed emphasis on financial inclusion.
HIGHLIGHTS
- INR2,000 crore incentive allocation for UPI & RuPay
- Focus on improving credit quality
- Expanding financial inclusion
- Creating CHAMPION SMEs by giving equity support and by anchoring liquidity access through the TReDS ecosystem
As policymakers look to build resilient payment rails and scalable SME financing, The Tech Panda spoke to fintech leaders to understand what these moves mean for the ecosystem.
Anand Chandra, Co-founder & Executive Director, Arya.ag
“Bharat-VISTAAR brings the promise of making agri-advisory more intelligent, timely, and accessible at the farmgate. By integrating AI with AgriStack and ICAR advisories in multiple languages, it can support better decisions on crops, inputs, and markets, especially for smallholder and first-generation women farmers.
“The Rural Women-Led Enterprises initiative, building on the Lakhpati Didi programme, takes this further by enabling the shift from subsistence livelihoods to ownership. In our experience, such enterprises succeed when they are deeply embedded in local agri-value chains, with access to working capital, market linkages, and autonomy over key decisions.
“Many women-led groups are already leading the adoption of sustainable and climate-resilient practices. Strengthening them through enterprise support will generate both economic and environmental dividends. The Budget lays strong groundwork; execution will depend on how these initiatives reach real farms, in real time.”
Anup Agarwal, Co-founder, Kiwi
“The INR2,000 crore incentive allocation for UPI and RuPay in Budget 2026 reinforces the importance of a sustainable digital payments ecosystem. As UPI continues to scale across transactions and use cases, the role of NPCI in maintaining interoperability, reliability, and low-cost access remains central. Sustained incentives are critical to preserving this affordability while enabling responsible innovation across the ecosystem.”
Vikas Tarachandani, Co-founder, SURE
“The Budget reinforces confidence in India’s financial ecosystem by prioritising stability, reform continuity and sector preparedness for long-term growth. The focus on improving credit quality and expanding financial inclusion strengthens the foundation for more disciplined borrowing and efficient capital allocation.”
Sundeep Mohindru, Founder & Promoter, M1xchange
“The Budget’s decisive push to create CHAMPION SMEs by giving equity support and by anchoring liquidity access through the TReDS ecosystem marks a structural shift in how working capital flows to MSMEs. By positioning TReDS as the settlement platform for liquidity support for MSMEs for their supplies to CPSEs, the government encourages wider participation in invoice discounting. This re-establishes the value add TReDS is making towards solving the delayed payment challenge for MSMEs. Credit guarantee support on Invoice discounting on TReDS and the integration of GeM with TReDS will enable quicker and more affordable financing for suppliers. Treating TReDS receivables as asset backed securities will deepen liquidity multifold and enhance the secondary market expansion for invoices discounted. Equally critical is the creation of corporate mitras through professional institutions, which will strengthen affordable compliance support in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns. Together, these measures reinforce MSMEs as India’s engine of growth.”
Pushkar Mukewar, Founder and CEO, Drip Capital
“The Budget’s measures to support seafood exports, including increased duty-free input limits, extended export timelines, and duty-free fish catch in the EEZ and on the High Seas, will significantly ease cost and working-capital pressures for Indian exporters. These steps create new avenues to scale operations, manage cash flows more predictably, and fully harness the economic value of marine resources.”
George Alexander Muthoot, Managing Director, Muthoot Finance
“As an NBFC deeply embedded in India’s household and MSME economy, we welcome the Union Budget 2026-27’s clear recognition of NBFCs as key enablers of credit delivery for Viksit Bharat, along with the proposed comprehensive review of the banking ecosystem. This reinforces the importance of diversified, last-mile lending models in expanding formal credit access across semi-formal and informal segments of the economy. Measures such as the Rs. 10,000 crore SME Growth Fund, deeper integration of TReDS with credit guarantee mechanisms, and initiatives to strengthen corporate bond markets are expected to meaningfully improve liquidity and financing options for MSMEs and small entrepreneurs.
“At a macro level, the Budget reflects a fiscally disciplined framework that prioritises sustainable, long-term growth over short-term stimulus. The Government’s commitment to fiscal consolidation, evident in the reduction of the fiscal deficit to 4.3% of GDP and an increase in public capital expenditure to Rs. 12.2 lakh crore, provides a stable foundation for growth, particularly in an environment of global uncertainty.
“The focus on Tier II and Tier III cities, rejuvenation of legacy industrial clusters, and technology-led compliance simplification aligns well with the operating realities of India’s informal and semi-formal economy. As a household-focused lender with deep roots across the country, we see this Budget as reinforcing the role of responsible, customer-centric NBFCs in supporting entrepreneurship, consumption-led growth and financial inclusion, while maintaining financial stability.”
