Microsoft Founder and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates praised Indian policies for financial innovation and inclusion. Gates said that his philanthropic foundation is working with other countries to introduce open-source technologies based on the effective implementation model of India.
As per Gates, the country has built a platform for money transfers and identification that includes Aadhar, the world's largest biometric database, and a system that is helpful in transactions between banks or smartphone apps. He said that the policies especially helped amid pandemic in reducing the cost and friction of money distribution to the poor in India.
On Tuesday, while speaking at Singapore Fintech Festival, Gates said, “If people are going to study one country right now, other than China, I’d say they should look at India." He added, “Things are really exploding there and innovation around that system is phenomenal."
Digital money transfer started to become a norm after the Government of India introduced demonetization in 2016. The move invalidated the currency notes of rupees 500 and 1000 to curb corruption and to make Indians go cashless.
India has made it mandatory for companies to use the country's UPI platform so transactions can take place among all services that include Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc., Paytm, and any new upstart.
Gates said, “We can’t forget that another pandemic will come, so we need to invest and be ready." He added, “Digital things overall remote learning, telemedicine, digital finance were greatly advanced. So even though the pandemic has been terrible, it has pushed some of these innovations including how quickly we make vaccines."
The organization named Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping some countries to introduce a similar system that is based on open-source technologies.
