At 87%, India has one of the highest fintech adoption rates, well above the global average. Fintech’s digital distribution across multiple domains: payments, lending, wealth management, insurance, and fraud management, has narrowed the gap for accessing financial services.

But when we zoom in on semi-urban and rural women, the picture changes. Uptake remains stubbornly low. These women are often “fintech-sceptical”, not because they don’t need the products, but because they don’t believe that fintechs can be trusted with their money. Closing this gap needs more than better features. It needs targeted trust-building.

After talking to over 20 fintech founders building solutions specifically for the women of Bharat, we realised a pattern. “Connection before Transaction” – trust must be the foundation of product innovation, distribution and promotion in women-centric fintech solutioning.

In urban settings, a financial product can lead with utility. Lower fees, faster transfers, better returns: the product justifies itself. The user tries it, and trust is built through repeated use. Bharat women, on the other hand, are used to informal savings circles, self-help groups (SHGs), and a neighbour who lends based on acquaintance. They work on a trust infrastructure, built over several years, with real enforcement mechanisms like social reputation and mutual obligation that no app has. Every design choice below is a different answer to the same question: how can a new financial solution build on top of existing trust infrastructure instead of seeking to compete with it?

Bharat women are swayed not by the latest features but by peer influence

Trust is built collaboratively for the women of Bharat. They are far more responsive to stories and endorsements from people they already know and respect—their neighbours, fellow self-help group members, and other women with a similar background who have used a solution and can vouch for it. Consider Mitali, who runs a small tailoring business. Two months ago, she needed a loan to buy better equipment. She heard her SHG friend Rina talking about how she’d gotten a small loan approved in under three days. Rina put her in touch with the loan provider’s local representative, and Mitali’s own loan came through in four days. She doesn’t remember a brochure or a placard. She remembers what Rina told her.

Mainstream marketing campaigns and celebrity endorsements, however well-curated, rarely penetrate this close-knit network; rural women respond better to relatable, familiar publicity than to aspirational advertising. Finding and promoting through a local champion can be an easy way to onboard new customers.

Handholding over rewards

Trust can also be achieved by providing women with consistent hand-holding and support. For a woman using a shared phone, navigating an app not in her language, trying a financial product for the first time, the deciding question isn’t “what do I get?” but “what happens if I get stuck?” An unreachable helpline or a bot that does not understand her query becomes a deal-breaker. 

In this case, agent networks are vital human bridges to onboard and handhold women in rural and semi-urban India onto the financial ecosystem. By providing localised, trusted, and barrier-free support, these agents (often called as business correspondents or “Sakhis”) transform abstract digital tools into tangible, usable financial services. Rather than providing generic customer care, they offer access to a dedicated “Didi” as a helpline. 

Even after her friend’s introduction, Mitali still struggled with the application process. It was the local correspondent who walked her through it, from filling out forms to receiving the funds, until she was confident enough to do it alone the next time. When a woman learns how to use a product from someone who shares the same dialect, background, and life experience, her fear of failure diminishes, and trust in the system grows. 

As of December 2025, over 50,000 bank “Sakhis” have been deployed under India’s rural livelihoods mission. Their presence has enabled more than ₹12 lakh crore in institutional credit to reach women’s self-help groups since 2013. This scale was possible due to the assurance, familiarity, and proximity provided by the women correspondents.

Partnership and tailored UI are where you start

Trust is hard to build on unfamiliar ground. Community-based organisations, like NGOs, SHGs, and women’s collectives, have already done the hard work of earning trust within their communities. A fintech that co-designs with these networks inherits that legitimacy.
Along with favourable partnerships, UI/UX design can be a powerful lever. Interfaces that mirror her existing financial behaviours offer a gentle learning curve (like risk-free demo transactions). Voice-enabled interfaces that communicate in simplified vernacular language reduce the intimidation of an unfamiliar digital environment and build her competence.

Women represent a wide, under-leveraged fintech customer base. Yet many fintechs still default to generic design and messaging, missing the chance to build trust and long-term engagement. The shift required is simple to state and hard to execute: move from transactions to relationships, rethink UI/UX, lean into personalisation, and build in dedicated handholding. Moreover, none of this scales like a purely digital fintech. Agent and Sakhi networks carry a recurring human cost per user acquired, one that a purely app-based fintech doesn’t have to pay. And peer trust can go both ways; a network that spreads endorsement at speed spreads a bad experience just as fast. One mishandled complaint or one agent who mis-sells a product can undo the trust built across an entire cluster of villages, not just with one user. However, the infrastructure to reach these underserved 200 million women of Bharat exists today. What’s still missing is a scalable solution that has earned their trust.

Published July 2026. Authored by Chitrangada Koley.