MUMBAI: India has digitized and standardized nearly every building block of its business ecosystem individually, but gaps in cross-platform connectivity and information flow continue to create inefficiencies and constrain access to capital, further impacting the MSME growth.
The new report by Bain & Company and NPCI Bharat BillPay Limited (NBBL), titled India’s Next Growth Frontier: B2B Commerce, Payments, and Credit, released at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, examines how India’s B2B workflows across business systems, payment providers, banks, financiers and public systems can be seamlessly connected by a centralized, interoperable digital rail, and how that can unlock operational efficiency and credit access for Indian businesses.
“India has progressed substantially on digital payment penetration, yet many B2B workflows spanning business systems, payment providers, banks, financiers and public systems remain largely fragmented. A gap that affects India’s businesses and MSMEs,” said Mr. Saurabh Trehan, Partner and India Head of Financial Services Practice, Bain & Company. “India’s next chapter of B2B transformation is not only about moving money faster; it is about making the underlying transaction visible, verifiable, and actionable across the ecosystem.”
Dr. Noopur Chaturvedi, MD & CEO, NBBL, said “The future of B2B commerce will be built on interoperability. As businesses increasingly digitize their operations, the ability to connect invoices, payments, reconciliation and financing through a common digital infrastructure is becoming increasingly critical. A standardized and connected ecosystem can help transform fragmented business processes into trusted digital journeys, creating value for enterprises of all sizes while improving credit access for underserved MSMEs. Through our collaboration with Bain & Company, we aim to contribute to the dialogue on how India can build the next generation of digital infrastructure that not only enables commerce and payments, but also drives productivity, financial inclusion and economic growth at scale.”
The cost of disconnection for Businesses and MSMEs
Businesses can unlock productivity by streamlining transaction-related processes. Finance teams spend 30%–40% of their bandwidth on reconciliation and transaction matching, including invoice processing, payment follow-ups and exception handling.
Additionally, fragmented information flows also compound the working-capital challenge for MSMEs. Industry estimates cited in the report indicate that formal credit supply of ~INR 34 lakh crore meets only part of an estimated ~INR 92 lakh crore of MSME debt demand. Smaller enterprises are disproportionately underserved, with formal channels meeting only 30%–40% of debt demand, translating to an ~INR 60 lakh crore formal gap.
The unlock: a centralized interoperable layer
The credit opportunity forms part of a broader productivity opportunity for India’s business sector. India’s formal business sector is an INR 130 lakh crore+ engine of economic activity, contributing a steady ~45% of the country’s GVA. While this remains well below the level in global economies, it signals the headroom that remains. The sector nonetheless serves as the backbone of a self-reliant economy. The report identifies a connected digital ecosystem as one of four key enablers that can help unlock its full potential.
A central, interoperable layer could connect ecosystem participants and digitise the order-to-cash cycle through standardised APIs, with minimal disruption to existing systems. It could automate reconciliation across over 20 crore monthly GST e-invoices and turn buyer-confirmed invoices into financeable records, enabling cash-flow-based underwriting alongside traditional collateral-based lending. A common, trusted information layer could also help address information mismatches behind a portion of the ~INR 8 lakh crore in delayed MSME receivables.
Advanced analytics and agentic AI, layered on the rail, can compound these gains further, through cash-flow intelligence, dynamic risk scoring, agentic credit underwriting, and open-market intelligence, with the potential to orchestrate the entire trade lifecycle end to end. With ecosystem-wide participation, the layer has the potential to become India’s B2B operating system, turning fragmented activity into a trusted, connected foundation for the country’s next phase of growth toward Viksit Bharat.