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Acknowledging the role of fintechs for driving more inclusions and influencing India’s financial ecosystem, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged them to beware and safeguard themselves against conventional and modern threats in a multipolar world.

Inaugurating the three-day Global Fintech Fest (GFF 2023) here, the FM said that today fintech is a robust and dynamic financial inclusion tool, and in lending they hold a 36 percent share of new-to-credit customers versus 22 percent share of the brick-and-mortar banks for which it’s one of the core businesses.

However, she said that in the modern world, the fintech ecosystem is open to various threats and challenges including physical border threats by conventional warfare, cyber threats, crypto threats, drugs and drug mafias, tax haven and tax evasions.

Addressing these threats which are before us and active are key to building a responsible, inclusive and resilient and sustainable financial ecosystem for which Sitharaman appealed to fintechs to invest heavily to protect themselves from such threats.

Later, a glittering awards night was held in which prominent fintech players from India and abroad were honoured in different categories.

The coveted Global Award for ‘Leading Fintech Personality of the Year’ for the Gulf Cooperation Countries went to Adeeb Ahamed, Managing Director, Lulu Financial Holdings, Abu Dhabi, for revolutionising cross-border payments between the GCC and India.

The President & COO of One97 Communications Ltd Bhavesh Gupta bagged the ‘Fintech Leader of the Year’, Volt Founder-CEO Tom Greenwood conferred the ‘Leading Fintech Personality of the Year-Europe’, Zerodha CTO Kailash Nadh won the ‘Fintech CTO of the Year’ awards, and Open Network for Digital Commerce given the ‘Fintech Company of the Year’ award.

Sitharaman also unveiled a through leadership report, “The Second Wave – Resilient, Inclusive, Exponential Fintech” in the presence of top honchos like Yash Erande, Saurabh Tripathi, Vishwas Patel, Naveen Surya, Kris Gopalakrishnan, G. Padmanabhan, Praveena Rai, Dilip Asbe, Srinivas Jain and others.