By Year-End Comment from Vishal Maru, Global Processing Head, FSS: 

“RBI’s recent focus on cyber resilience, digital fraud mitigation and early conversations on responsible AI principles indicate that regulatory expectations in 2026 will emphasise transparency, model governance and operational accountability. Companies should prepare for stricter reporting requirements, clearer audit trails and deeper scrutiny of AI-driven decisions. At FSS, we are already seeing banks accelerate adoption of AI-driven reconciliation, dispute management and fraud intelligence to align with this direction. 

As the Union Budget approaches, industry players expect support through a national payments AI sandbox, incentives for on-prem compute infrastructure and scaled AI skilling programmes. As we move into 2026, companies can expect AI to shift from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide adoption. Nearly half of Indian organisations already run multiple AI use cases in production, and global AI spending in banking is expected to cross USD 75 billion by 2030. 

The coming year will bring a stronger push toward responsible and explainable AI, especially as payments platforms process millions of real-time transactions daily. Businesses will increasingly prioritise auditable and regulator-aligned AI systems to counter multimodal fraud and strengthen compliance. 

With the right policy framework, 2026 will be the year AI becomes a core operating layer for India’s payments and banking ecosystem.”