📄 Abstract
India's rural micro-enterprise sector comprising tens of millions of informal and semi-formal units engaged in agriculture-allied activity, trade, and small-scale manufacturing has historically been constrained by a persistent credit and payments gap. Over the past decade, the diffusion of financial technology (FinTech), underpinned by public digital infrastructure such as Aadhaar, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and the Jan Dhan–Aadhaar–Mobile (JAM) trinity, has reshaped how rural micro-enterprises transact, save, borrow, and insure. This paper synthesizes primary source data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the World Bank's Global Findex Database 2025, the Union Budget 2025-26, and supporting industry and academic literature to examine the channels through which FinTech affects rural economic development, with a specific focus on micro-enterprises. It finds that FinTech has meaningfully expanded the access and usage dimensions of financial inclusion the RBI's Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) rose from 43.4 in March 2017 to 67.0 in March 2025 and that India's financial account ownership reached 89 percent in 2024 according to the World Bank, up from 35 percent in 2011. At the same time, the same Global Index data show that 16 percent of Indian account holders remain inactive, four times the average for peer low and middle income economies, underscoring a persistent gap between formal access and meaningful usage. On the credit side, the Union Budget 2025-26 introduced targeted measures a Grameen Credit Score framework for rural borrowers, an expanded credit guarantee cover for micro and small enterprises, and Udyam-linked credit cards for micro-enterprises aimed directly at narrowing the estimated ₹20–30 lakh crore MSME credit gap. The paper concludes with policy implications for regulators, financial institutions, and rural development practitioners, and outlines an agenda for future empirical research.
🏷️ Keywords
📚 How to Cite:
Mansi Garg, Dr. Ashok Kumar , FINTECH AND RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA'S MICRO-ENTERPRISE SECTOR , Volume 12 , Issue 10, October 2026, International Journal of Global Economic Light (JGEL) , Pages: 1 - 7 ,