Tech Will Transform Retail Industry; Provide Credit Access To Millions Of Retailers: Nilekani

Technology is transforming the retail industry in the country which will provide credit access to millions of small retailers helping the market to grow, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said on Wednesday.

"We are already seeing growth in digital payments, which reached USD 1 trillion last year and are expected to reach to 1.1 billion transactions a day in the coming years...you will see the possible expansion of credit, democratisation, so millions of retailers will have access to credit using the digital footprints or the account aggregator," Nilekani said virtually addressing the Retail Leadership Summit.

UPI payments have become ubiquitous and became the first big thing which impacted retail, Nilekani, the founding chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar), noted.

"The second big thing, which will impact retail is much easier access to credit. It's very important that merchants big and small, get access to credit. And historically, credit was given on the basis of your assets and collateral and all kinds of going through all your data manually by somebody and it was very complicated to get credit," he stated.

But now with the digital payment data coupled with the GST (goods and services tax) number of the supplier it will become easy for small businesses to get credit, he said.

"So we are going to see an explosion of credit based on data benefiting retailers...So both sides, buyer and seller, are going to get access to credit in a democratised way in a large scale. And we see that as one would be a big push in the coming years, which will benefit all of you because it will lead to the market growth and enable people to buy things and have retail commerce across the country," he added.