THE BANKERS' BOOKSHELF · 2026-05-04 · 35 min
In this episode, Paolo Sironi speaks with Dr. Balakrishnan Mahadevan (Balu), author of Designing Change: My Journey Through India’s Digital Payments Transformation . India’s digital payments have grown from under one billion transactions annually around 2010 to over 225 billion by March 2025 - a more than 200-fold increase. Through his unique lens as a former banking technology leader, COO of NPCI during its critical scaling years, and World Bank advisor, Balu offers a rare insider’s account of how this transformation actually happened. The conversation explores the book’s core message: that payments innovation is rarely about a single breakthrough. Instead, it emerges through decades of institutional development, regulatory leadership, collaborative ecosystem building, and combinatorial innovation - integrating real-time rails, mobile interfaces, APIs, and interoperable frameworks. Balu discusses the long journey from early electronic systems to real-time networks like UPI, the critical role of institutional design, overcoming early skepticism, and lessons for both developing and developed markets.
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