Regulatory structuring, licensing, and contract drafting for payment platforms, digital lenders, wealthtech and insurtech products, account aggregators, and crypto and VDA platforms, from an Indian legal team that actually tracks RBI, FIU-IND, and PMLA requirements as they change.
Payments, lending, an account aggregator play, a crypto platform, or something else entirely, share the details and we’ll come back with a clear scope and fixed fee.
Most startup legal work is contracts and corporate structure. Fintech adds a layer most other sectors don’t face: entity-level licensing, activity-specific RBI guidelines, and, for some models, registration with a completely separate regulator like FIU-IND. Getting this wrong doesn’t just mean a bad contract, it can mean a platform that can’t legally operate. This page is part of our broader startup lawyer in India practice, focused specifically on what financial technology companies need.
Fintech law is the body of regulation governing technology-driven financial products and services, payments, lending, investment, insurance, and digital assets. In India, it isn’t one single statute. It’s a combination of entity-based licensing (which regulator you need to register with, and under what category), activity-based guidelines (rules that apply based on what you’re actually doing, regardless of your entity type), and general law that applies to any business, contracts, data protection, and consumer protection. A fintech lawyer’s job is knowing which of these layers apply to your specific product, since two companies building what looks like a similar app can sit under entirely different regulatory obligations depending on how the product is actually structured.
Platforms aggregating and settling payments on behalf of merchants fall under RBI’s Payment Aggregator framework, built on the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. RBI has tightened this space significantly, including restricting aggregators to routing funds only to merchants they hold a direct contractual relationship with.
Lending apps and platforms sit under RBI’s Digital Lending Guidelines, with an underlying NBFC registration requirement, or a partnership with a regulated lender, depending on the model. RBI’s recent Scale Based Regulation amendments have also reshaped which NBFC category a given entity actually falls into.
Platforms built on the consent-based data-sharing framework operate as NBFC-Account Aggregators under a dedicated RBI licence, a genuinely distinct regulatory category from lending or payments.
Investment and advisory platforms carry SEBI considerations alongside RBI-adjacent obligations, particularly where the product touches securities, mutual funds, or investment advice.
Digital insurance distribution and technology platforms carry IRDAI considerations layered on top of standard fintech obligations.
BNPL products are treated by RBI as a form of digital lending, and generally carry the same underlying licensing and disclosure obligations as other credit products, not a lighter-touch category of their own.
Exchanges, wallets, and other platforms dealing in cryptocurrency or other virtual digital assets carry their own distinct compliance path, covered in full below, separate from RBI’s banking-system licensing altogether.
Digital-first banking products built on a partner bank’s licence, where the contractual relationship with that partner bank is often the single most important document in the entire structure.
Crypto is legal to trade and hold in India, but it isn’t legal tender, and it isn’t lightly regulated. There’s no single dedicated crypto law, instead, compliance runs across several distinct obligations that every exchange, wallet provider, or VDA platform serving Indian users needs to meet.
Since March 2023, virtual digital asset service providers, exchanges, wallet providers, and platforms including NFT marketplaces and token issuers, must register with the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND) as reporting entities under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. Updated AML and CFT guidelines issued in January 2026 raised the bar further, requiring live-selfie liveness checks, geo-tagged onboarding, and a designated compliance officer, and explicitly banning mixers, tumblers, and anonymous or privacy-focused tokens on platforms serving Indian users. Operating without registration carries real consequences, enforcement action has included penalties against major offshore exchanges and website takedowns for non-compliant platforms.
Under the Income Tax Act, virtual digital assets carry a flat 30% tax on gains, with no loss offset permitted against other income, and a 1% TDS on transfers above a specified threshold. GST also applies to platform and transaction fees. This is one of the more heavily taxed crypto regimes globally, and it needs to be built into your platform’s compliance and reporting from day one, not treated as an afterthought.
Registering as a reporting entity is a compliance obligation, not a government endorsement or a full financial licence. Parliament has specifically flagged that users shouldn’t assume regulatory protection or recourse from FIU-IND registration alone, worth knowing if your own marketing implies otherwise.
RBI regulates fintech through two overlapping mechanisms: entity-based licensing, which category of NBFC or payment entity you’re registered as, and activity-based guidelines, rules that apply based on what your product actually does, regardless of entity type. A digital lending app can be caught by RBI’s Digital Lending Guidelines even where the underlying credit is disbursed by a partner NBFC or bank. KYC and AML obligations run through the Prevention of Money Laundering Act across payments, lending, and crypto alike, and recent RBI direction has added Additional Factor Authentication and fraud-compensation requirements for digital payment channels. Cross-border fintech activity brings FEMA into scope as well. None of this is static, RBI, FIU-IND, and SEBI have all issued significant updates within the past year, which is exactly why fintech compliance needs ongoing legal attention, not a one-time setup.
Terms with the merchants, banks, or NBFCs whose funds or credit you’re actually handling.
The contract underpinning a banking-as-a-service or lending-partner model, often the single most important document in the structure.
Internal compliance policies required under PMLA, tailored to your actual product, not copied from an unrelated business.
Required for account aggregator and open-finance style products handling financial data with explicit user consent.
Especially critical for lending and crypto products, where regulators expect clear disclosure of risk, fees, and what the platform is and isn’t responsible for.
Financial data is inherently sensitive, and fintech platforms carry heightened data protection obligations under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act.
Fintech investors scrutinise regulatory compliance during due diligence more closely than almost any other sector, an unresolved licensing question can stall a round entirely. We draft term sheets, SAFEs, and shareholders’ agreements for fintech founders, and can help you get genuinely diligence-ready on the regulatory side before investors start asking.
Fintech regulation in India moves fast, RBI, FIU-IND, and SEBI have each issued significant updates within the past year alone. What matters isn’t a firm claiming to be the biggest, it’s a legal team that tracks these changes as they happen and tells you plainly whether they affect your product, rather than working from guidance that’s already out of date. My Legal Pal is led by Prakhar Rai, an advocate enrolled with the Bar Council of India and an alumnus of NLSIU Bangalore, with a Master of Business Laws and 10+ years of experience, working with fintech founders across payments, lending, and digital asset platforms.
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Tell us what you’re building, and we’ll come back with a clear scope and fixed fee.
