Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and chairman, described 'Finternet' as the future of financial systems and offered an insight into how India's fintech scene might look in the near future.

According to Nilekani, Finternet would be user-centric and unified, including all forms of assets with a uniform infrastructure. He provided insights into the notion of digital asset tokenization using cryptographic breakthroughs.

"The Internet is a new approach to global finance defined by the three 'U's': it is user-centric, unified, and universal, which means it must maintain the user at the center and be universal, which means it must cut across all asset classes. The Finternet blends the benefits of the regulated world with the finest that tokenization technology has to offer. It starts with tokens and then allows for universal interoperability and composability," he explained.

Nilekani was speaking at the Global Fintech Festival (GFF)

"We have witnessed innovation in the financial ecosystem. This is happening in India and around the world. But we also see that financial systems are unable to handle the demand from users as they want more choice and more control,” he explained

The main aspects of the new financial system will be to bring assets —land, property, bonds, financial investment, art, paintings — under a single infrastructure and where they get tokenized.

"It allows everyone to contribute and manages all assets. We want something that allows everyone to participate and control various types of assets. User-controlled assets, user content, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), adjusted assets that have been certified by someone, registered assets like land, or regulated assets such as financial goods," he stated.

Nilekani went on to say that this is not something that will happen in the distant future, but rather that it is occurring now.

"This is not an architectural or a paper; it is being constructed on the ground. We already have multiple laboratories throughout the world working on Finternet. It is now being deployed across the world. "This is an ambitious vision that will be implemented gradually," he continued.

Nilekani, Pramod Varma, Siddharth Shetty, and Agustin Carstens, along with the team at BIS (Bank for International Settlements), published a white paper on the subject in April 2024.