Plug, Play, Scale: The fintech advantage in India’s BaaP revolution

The future of banking is undergoing a significant transformation, moving beyond mere digitalization to become collaborative, modular, and driven by real-time data. A major part of this transformation is the emergence of Banking-as-a-Platform (BaaP), a model where banks shift from being traditional service providers to becoming infrastructure enablers. While Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provides access to core banking capabilities via APIs, BaaP goes further, allowing third-party developers, fintechs, and startups to build, innovate, and scale on top of a modular banking platform.

Think of BaaS as providing the building blocks, while BaaP is the entire Lego table. A space where builders can combine pieces, add their own, and create something entirely new.

In India, where Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) such as UPI, Aadhaar, and ONDC have revolutionized interoperability and consent-driven data sharing, the conditions are ripe for BaaP to thrive. The country’s vibrant fintech ecosystem, combined with a developer-first mindset and rising consumer expectations, is perfectly poised to embrace this model. The focus now shifts to whether fintech players are ready to fully capitalize on this potential.

BaaP vs BaaS: More than APIs

It’s important to understand the distinction between BaaP and BaaS. BaaS is fundamentally about access; it allows non-bank players to embed services like payments, lending, and KYC via APIs. BaaP, in contrast, is about enablement. It provides a modular, co-creative space where third-party services can integrate, interact, and evolve collaboratively.

If BaaS is a utility, BaaP is a marketplace. Through BaaP, banks can monetize APIs, create platform ecosystems, and enable bundled offerings that go beyond traditional financial products. It turns banks into orchestrators of innovation rather than passive infrastructure providers.

India’s DPI advantage: Fertile ground for platforms

India’s fintech revolution is being powered by a combination of infrastructure, adoption, and trust. With over 11 billion UPI transactions every month, real-time payments are now embedded in everyday life. The Account Aggregator framework enables secure, consent-based data sharing across institutions, and Aadhaar has created a nationwide digital identity layer.

Together, these elements form the India Stack, a robust, open infrastructure that allows fintechs to plug into public systems and scale efficiently and compliantly. BaaP mirrors this public infrastructure in the private sector, offering API-first, real-time-ready platforms for co-creation.

This means fintechs no longer have to build against monolithic banking cores. They can build with banks and on banks, unlocking speed, reach, and reliability without the burden of legacy systems.

Integrating into BaaP ecosystems: Overcoming fintech challenges

As fintechs scale, they encounter familiar friction points. Legacy, batch-based systems struggle under the volume of real-time transactions, especially in use cases like micropayments or instant lending. Critical elements like fraud detection and credit scoring demand sub-second insights, and not overnight reports. Such data fragmentation makes compliance and observability difficult.

Real-time data streaming provides the solution. With continuous data movement and governance, fintechs can detect fraud in milliseconds, approve loans instantly, trigger dynamic pricing models, and ensure audit trails are always current. The philosophy is simple: move data at the pace business demands.

Monetising platforms: Transforming banking dynamics

Forward‑looking banks are expanding beyond access to transform their platforms into monetization engines. API marketplaces allow developers to plug in directly. Revenue-sharing with fintech partners enables the co-creation of value. Some banks are even launching data-as-a-service offerings, providing anonymized analytics as a premium product.

Banks are evolving from transaction processors to ecosystem orchestrators. Fintechs, insurers, and even non-financial players co-create on these platforms, accelerating innovation and opening new channels for growth, distribution, and branding.

For fintechs, this means you can distribute, scale, and monetize faster, without building infrastructure from scratch.

A message to builders: Embracing a new tech mindset for platforms

In 2025 and beyond, BaaP-ready applications require more than just smart UI. They need intelligent backends, event-driven architectures, low-latency and high-throughput data systems, streaming data pipelines, and robust interoperability with APIs.

Acting on real‑time data has shifted from a luxury to a necessity, becoming essential for compliance, personalization, scalability, and performance. Fintechs that embed these capabilities will stay agile, secure, and relevant in a platform-driven world.

Banks in the era of BaaP: Embracing transformation

There is a lingering fear that BaaP reduces banks to invisible backend utilities. In reality, the opposite is true: banks are becoming more intelligent, embedded, and indispensable.

They open new customer channels through third-party apps. They offer modular services like KYC-as-a-service or payment rails. They monetize insights and APIs. And they become vital nodes in a broader digital economy.

Meanwhile, fintechs and banks are not competitors, but collaborators. Together, they form a network of interoperable services that power the future of finance.

Platforms are inevitable, Be ready

The API economy, India’s DPI architecture, and evolving consumer expectations are not isolated forces. Together, they are shaping a platform-first future for finance.

For fintech CTOs, developers, and product leaders, this is a call to build platform-ready systems that are powered by real-time data, modular architectures, and compliant infrastructures.

Banking-as-a-Platform isn’t just booming, it’s now becoming the new operating model. And those who can plug, play, and scale will shape the direction of modern finance.

Authored by Anil Kanwar, Data Streaming Platform Head - APAC & MEA, Confluent