Note-ban decision led to five-fold rise in fintech deals in 2017: report

The note-ban decision upped investor interest in the country’s fintech industry that led to a five-fold increase in deal activity in 2017, a report on Wednesday said.
Venture investing in the country’s fintech sector shot up five times to USD 2.4 billion during the year and was a major factor driving the surge in investments into such new- age companies globally, it said.
At the global level, heightened activity in India, along with the UK and the US led to a 18 per cent rise in fintech financing at USD 27.4 billion in 2017, the report said.
The report by global tech major Accenture attributed the surge in deals to the controversial demonetisation decision of the government.
“India’s boom was driven by strong demand for cashless services following the country’s demonetisation events,” senior managing director in its financial services practice Julian Skan said.
It can be noted that the decision has had a limited impact on its key aims as Indians returned over 99 per cent of the cash held by them.
Deal activity in the country was led by the mobile wallet-turned-payments bank Paytm, which witnessed a USD 1.4 billion infusion during the year.
Going by numbers, there was a 65 per cent surge in number of deals as compared to the activity in 2016, the report said.
Demonetisation “prompted millions of Indians to shift to mobile payments and other cashless service providers like Paytm”, the report said.
The report includes data from investments by venture-capital and private-equity firms, corporations and corporate venture-capital divisions, hedge funds, accelerators, and government-backed funds, and both equity as well as non-equity financing.