The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is calling on FinTech companies to actively integrate with the Unified Lending Interface (ULI), a new digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiative aimed at revolutionising credit delivery in the same way that UPI transformed digital payments.
“We would like FinTechs to come and offer their services. What they will get in a single platform is a set of more than 50 lenders, already onboarded to the ULI,”
said an RBI official familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Encouraging wider participation, the official added,
“This is something we would strongly encourage, at least explore,”
referring to the rapidly evolving ecosystem being built around ULI.
The ULI platform, which was piloted recently, is being positioned as a unified framework to streamline and digitise credit distribution by facilitating seamless data-sharing between borrowers and lenders. According to the central bank, the system eliminates the need for FinTechs to create individual integrations with multiple banks and NBFCs, offering instead a single integration point to access over 50 onboarded lenders.
The RBI’s renewed push for ULI comes at a time when the central bank is keen to accelerate technology-led innovation in lending.
“Credit is another area where a lot of technology-based innovations need to take place,”
the RBI official noted, adding that early results from the pilot phase have been “very encouraging.”
The ULI initiative was formally unveiled by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das during the RBI@90 Global Conference on Digital Public Infrastructure on August 26, 2024.
“Continuing on this journey of digitalisation of banking services, last year we launched the pilot of a technology platform which enables frictionless credit. From now on, we propose to call it the Unified Lending Interface (ULI),”
Das said at the time.
Drawing parallels to UPI, Das added,
“Just like UPI transformed the payments ecosystem, we expect that ULI will play a similar role in transforming the lending space in India.”
The RBI Governor also positioned ULI within a broader national framework for financial inclusion, calling it part of a “new trinity” of JAM-UPI-ULI—an integrated architecture combining Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, and Mobile (JAM) with India’s payments and credit systems.
As India strengthens its DPI stack, the central bank sees ULI as a pivotal link in making frictionless, inclusive, and secure credit more accessible to consumers and MSMEs through collaborative efforts between regulators, FinTechs, and traditional financial institutions.
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