Shankari, one of millions of smallholder farmers in India’s Uttar Pradesh region, makes a steady income selling vegetables and gourds to her village and nearby towns. And thanks to advancements in digital technologies, she gets paid digitally to an account linked to the Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, without having to wait.
But until recently, Shankari couldn’t buy equipment or hire much-needed help during harvest time, as lenders saw her as high risk. Her profitable business and history of financial transactions was invisible to financial service providers, and she had no way of easily sharing that information. She was effectively excluded from the financing that she needed to grow.
Billions of unbanked and underbanked workers around the world face the same challenges as Shankari. Although account ownership and digital financial services are on the rise worldwide, according to the World Bank’s recent Global Findex 2025 report, access to credit is still a major barrier for more than a billion people around the world. Without easy access to trusted, verifiable financial information, lenders lack visibility into small businesses’ revenue and digital payments history — and clients such as Shankari get left behind.
About the authors
Debdoot Banerjee
Debdoot Banerjee is the senior director of digital strategy and transformation for Accion’s advisory team, based in India. In this role, Debdoot leads the digital transformation of financial service providers. Prior to joining Accion, Debdoot was the head of products, digital banking, and alliances at Jana Small Finance Bank.
Anurag Saxena
Anurag Saxena serves as vice president for Asia in Accion’s advisory team, based in India. In this position, Anurag oversees Accion’s current portfolio of advisory projects and serves as a senior resource for digital financial services in Asia. Before joining Accion, Anurag held the chief operating officer and head of strategy roles at EasyGov, a Jio Platforms subsidiary.
