GFF 2026: Inside The New Fintech Launches That Made Headlines On Day 1

The annual Global Fintech Festival 2026 kicked off on a glitzy note yesterday. As usual, the first day saw Indian fintech startups, from BharatPe to PhonePe, unveil a plethora of new launches and products for consumers and merchants. 

Moving beyond payments, the day saw a wave of fresh product launches by startups and NPCI around AI, credit, fraud prevention and embedded financial services. Here are the prominent announcements that caught our attention…

BharatPe Rolls Out An Agentic AI Tool For Merchants

As AI continues to disrupt the status quo, BharatPe announced the launch of an agentic AI platform, specifically catering to merchants and businesses. 

Built on Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, the new offering brings an AI assistant directly into BharatPe’s business app. The tool can understand the merchant’s business, products and interaction history, allowing them to communicate in their preferred language and take action across more than 60 live systems in real time. 

Additionally, it also unveiled Credit Coach, which leverages AI to increase credit awareness amongst users. The platform generates personalised videos, featuring a digital avatar of former Indian cricketer Rohit Sharma. 

Jio Payment Solutions Unveils Cross-Border Payment Service

Financial services giant Jio Financial Services’ (JFS) subsidiary has partnered with US-based Citi to launch a cross-border payments service. Under this, it will enable domestic businesses to accept international payments from customers worldwide. 

In a post on LinkedIn, JFS said that the service is designed to make international payments more seamless, efficient and cost-effective, with ambitions to reduce turnaround time and offer greater convenience for Indians across borders.

Pine Labs Launches Agentic Commerce Stack

The listed fintech major has partnered with L&T Finance to introduce an agentic commerce feature on the latter’s PLANET app. The agentic commerce feature allows AI agents to carry out transactions on behalf of users within predefined controls.

The integration uses Pine Labs Payments Protocol (P3P) and the Grantex protocol to enable communication between AI agents and facilitate controlled transaction execution.

The offering will initially focus on flight ticket bookings. Under the proposed setup, an AI agent can act on a user’s stated intent and complete the booking process within the app, subject to user-defined parameters or “guardrails”.

Amazon Pay’s New Credit Card For Small Merchants

Amazon Pay has joined hands with Kotak Mahindra Bank to launch co-branded credit cards for small business owners. The credit cards will be limited to merchants on Amazon Business, the company’s dedicated B2B ecommerce marketplace.

The ecommerce giant said that the credit card will combine cashback on business expenses with an interest-free credit period, giving small businesses flexibility to manage their purchase payments. The card will also provide offers on AWS credits, covering services such as cloud computing, data storage and AI.

Yubi Debuts New Lending Platform For Retail Borrowers

Fintech giant Yubi has launched Pye, a new lending platform built for retail borrowers. The service will enable retail borrowers to connect with lending institutions through a single integration.

Pye is designed to cater to everyday credit needs, such as weddings, home and education expenses, and medical emergencies. Rather than routing a borrower’s application to a single lender, the platform connects it with a network of lending partners and matches the borrower with the creditor best suited to their profile, loan requirement and timeline.

Besides this, it also unveiled a consumer credit-health app called TopScore, where users can access their credit score and view the information in simplified language across 10 languages.

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