<p>
        <img
          alt="M2P Fintech"
          height="1001"
          src="https://marketing-cms.idflow.com/media/m2p-website-file/marketing-cms/m2p-blog/2022/04/Artboard-1-copy-8-1.webp"
          width="2001"
        />
      Did you know? A majority of consumers say user experience is a top factor in whether they stay with a bank, credit card, or loan provider. Five years ago, that was already true. It&#39;s only become truer now that switching from one banking app to another takes a single tap.</p><h2>Transforming transactions into experience</h2><p>Customer-centricity isn&#39;t a nice-to-have for banks anymore — it&#39;s a survival requirement. Turning transactions into personalized, low-friction experiences is what keeps customers from switching to a competitor&#39;s app.</p><p>Neobanks led that shift by bridging conventional banking with evolving customer expectations. High on personalization and flexibility, they changed what &quot;banking&quot; looks like for a generation of Indian consumers and small businesses.</p><p>None of that happens at the app layer alone, though. Behind every clean onboarding screen sits a stack of infrastructure the user never sees: a <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/kyc-suite/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">digital KYC solution</a> that verifies identity in seconds, a <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/turing-core-banking/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">core banking solution</a> that keeps the ledger accurate in real time, and fraud controls that quietly decide which transactions clear. As the neobanks below have scaled, this infrastructure layer — not just app design — has become the real differentiator.</p><h2>New to the world of neobanks?</h2><p>Don&#39;t confuse <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/blog/neo-banking-101-all-you-need-to-know/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">neobanks</a> with digital banks — they&#39;re not the same thing. Digital banks are traditional banks offering services online. <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/blog/neo-banking-the-rise-of-new-age-banking/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Neobanks</a> are fintechs and NBFCs delivering cost-efficient, personalized financial services to gig workers, blue-collar employees, and small businesses, usually in partnership with a licensed bank.</p><p>Free from legacy infrastructure and rigid administrative structures, neobanks have always focused on convenience and alternative ways to assess creditworthiness. What&#39;s changed since 2021 is that they&#39;re now doing this inside a much tighter regulatory perimeter.</p><h2>The ground has shifted since 2021</h2><p>A few regulatory moves reshaped this entire list:</p><ul class="list-bullet"><li
          class=""
          style=""
          value="1"
        ><strong>RBI&#39;s June 2022 clarification on prepaid instruments</strong> barred non-bank PPIs from being loaded via credit lines or credit cards. This hit the &quot;spend now, settle later&quot; model that several youth- and teen-focused neobanks had built their card economics around.</li><li
          class=""
          style=""
          value="2"
        ><strong>The 2022 Digital Lending Guidelines</strong> tightened how loans sourced through fintech apps must be disbursed, serviced, and disclosed — moving control of loan accounts and repayment flows more firmly onto regulated balance sheets.</li><li
          class=""
          style=""
          value="3"
        ><strong>The 2023–24 funding slowdown</strong> pushed the sector from growth-at-all-costs to unit economics. Several neobanks trimmed teams, narrowed product lines, or leaned harder into their B2B/business-banking lines, which had cleaner paths to revenue than consumer neobanking.</li></ul><p>The neobanks still standing in 2026 are, largely, the ones that adapted to all three. Here&#39;s where each of the original 14 stands today.</p><p><strong>In this list:</strong> RazorpayX · FamPay · Niyo · Open · Freo · Fi Money · Jupiter · InstantPay · Muvin · Finin · Akudo · SaveIn · Zikzuk · OCareNeo</p><hr /><h3>1. <a href="https://razorpay.com/x/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">RazorpayX</a></h3><p>RazorpayX is the business banking product from Razorpay, the payments unicorn founded by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar in Bangalore in 2014. It helps businesses manage payouts, payroll, vendor payments, and cash flow, with credit and lending features layered on for working-capital needs — the kind of ongoing repayment tracking a <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/loan-management-system/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">loan management software</a> is built to handle at scale.</p><p>Razorpay went on to raise further growth capital after 2021 and completed its reverse-flip redomiciliation from the US back to India in 2023 — a move several other Indian fintech unicorns have since followed. RazorpayX itself has expanded into payroll, current accounts, and embedded lending for the businesses that sit on top of Razorpay&#39;s payments stack.</p><h3>2. <a href="https://www.fampay.in/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">FamPay</a></h3><p>FamPay, founded by Kush Taneja and Sambhav Jain in Bangalore in 2019, built India&#39;s best-known neobank for teenagers — a numberless, co-branded prepaid card (with IDFC FIRST Bank) designed with VISA, rewarded with Famcoins, and usable under parental supervision.</p><p>RBI&#39;s 2022 restriction on credit-line-loaded prepaid instruments landed squarely on this category of product, and FamPay — like most teen-focused card apps — had to rework parts of its model around UPI-first, prepaid-only flows rather than the credit-adjacent spending it originally offered. Its rewards layer, Famcoins, is the kind of feature that depends on a proper <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/rewards/">rewards management platform</a> sitting underneath it to track, redeem, and reconcile at volume.</p><h3>3. <a href="https://www.goniyo.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Niyo</a></h3><p>Niyo, founded by Vinay Bagri and Virender Bisht in Bangalore in 2015, remains one of the clearest financial-inclusion stories in Indian neobanking. NiyoX (a zero-balance savings account with Equitas Small Finance Bank) and Niyo Global (a multi-currency forex travel card with SBM Bank and DCB Bank) are both still core to its offering, and the company has continued to raise growth-stage funding in the years since.</p><p>Niyo built much of its early infrastructure on <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">M2P&#39;s</a> APIs.</p><h3>4. <a href="https://www.open.money/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Open</a></h3><p>Open, founded in Bangalore in 2017 by Anish Achuthan, Ajeesh Achuthan, Mabel Chacko, and Deena Jacob, built a business banking platform for startups and SMEs — current accounts, payments, expense management, and auto-reconciliation, the kind of <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/recon360/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">reconciliation software</a> capability that&#39;s now table stakes for any serious business banking product.</p><p>Open went on to reach unicorn status in a later funding round backed by investors including Temasek and Google, and spun out its banking-as-a-service infrastructure (Zwitch) as a separate offering for other fintechs to build on.</p><h3>5. <a href="https://freo.money/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Freo</a> (formerly MoneyTap)</h3><p>Freo — rebranded from MoneyTap — was founded by Anuj Kacker, Bala Parthasarathy, and Kunal Varma in Bangalore, and remains India&#39;s clearest example of a credit-led neobank: it leads with credit lines and cards, then builds savings and spending around that credit relationship, in partnership with banks and NBFCs including IDFC FIRST Bank and RBL Bank.</p><p>That model runs on two things end to end: originating the credit line — the job a <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/loan-origination-system/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">digital loan origination system</a> is built to standardize — and then servicing it through repayment, which is exactly what a <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/loan-management-system/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">loan management software</a> layer handles once the credit is live.</p><h3>6. <a href="https://fi.money/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Fi Money</a></h3><p>Fi Money, founded by Sujith Narayanan and Sumit Gwalani in Bangalore in 2019, partners with Federal Bank for its zero-balance savings account and debit card. Since 2021, Fi has broadened well past savings — adding a co-branded Fi-Federal credit card, mutual fund and stock investing, and account-aggregator-linked features that let users see accounts held elsewhere inside the Fi app.</p><h3>7. <a href="https://jupiter.money/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jupiter</a></h3><p>Jupiter, founded by Citrus Pay founder Jitendra Gupta in Mumbai in 2019, launched with an invite-only model built around Federal Bank–backed savings accounts, debit cards, and &quot;Pots&quot; for goal-based saving. It has since broadened into salary accounts and a credit card product (Jupiter Edge).</p><p>Like most of the sector, Jupiter navigated the 2022–23 funding slowdown by tightening cost discipline rather than chasing user growth for its own sake — a pattern that shows up across nearly every neobank on this list that survived the reset.</p><h3>8. <a href="https://instantpay.in/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">InstantPay</a></h3><p>InstantPay, founded by Shailendra Agarwal, Mohammad Rehan, and Sankalp Shangari in New Delhi in 2013, built full-stack banking for individuals, SMEs, and larger businesses via partnerships with ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, and YES Bank. Its Digi Kendra branches extend banking, insurance, and bill-payment access to customers who aren&#39;t comfortable transacting online.</p><p>At the volumes a business-correspondent network like this processes — cash-in, cash-out, remittances, bill pay, all happening through agents rather than a single app — a proper <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/frm-aml/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">fraud and risk management solution</a> isn&#39;t optional. It&#39;s the only practical way to keep agent-led transactions safe at scale.</p><h3>9. Muvin</h3><p>Muvin, founded by Vineet Gupta and Mukund Rao in Bangalore in 2020, launched a prepaid card and app aimed at teens and young adults. Its card-based model sat in the same category that RBI&#39;s 2022 prepaid-instrument restrictions reshaped most heavily.</p><h3>10. Finin</h3><p>Finin, founded by Suman Gandham and Sudheer Maram in Bangalore in 2019, offered unified account views and automated money management for students and young professionals, built on M2P&#39;s APIs and a partnership with SBM Bank.</p><h3>11. Akudo</h3><p>Akudo, founded by Lavika Aggarwal, Sajal Khanna, and Jagveer Gandhi in Bangalore in 2020, built a gamified debit card for teens in partnership with VISA and RBL Bank, aimed at building savings habits early.</p><h3>12. SaveIn</h3><p>SaveIn, founded by Anurag Varma, Gaurav Luthra, and Jitin Bhasin in New Delhi in 2020, built a peer-to-peer lending and matchmaking platform connecting borrowers with trusted lenders through licensed banking and payment partners.</p><h3>13. Zikzuk</h3><p>Zikzuk, founded by Raj N in Telangana in 2020, targeted SMEs with a founder-focused credit card and AI/ML-driven business intelligence, plus connected banking that aggregates a business&#39;s accounts into one view.</p><h3>14. OCareNeo</h3><p>OCareNeo, founded by Dr. Neeraj Sheth in 2015, positioned itself as India&#39;s first health-and-banking platform — QR-based medical history access, virtual cards for medical expenses, and a digital health passport tied to financial information.</p><hr /><h2>Where the story goes from here</h2><p>The neobanks that make up this list in 2026 look noticeably different from their 2021 selves — not because the customer promise changed, but because the infrastructure underneath it had to grow up fast. Compliant onboarding, real-time ledgers, disclosed and properly serviced credit, and fraud detection built for scale aren&#39;t optional extras anymore; they&#39;re what separates a neobank that survives a regulatory reset from one that doesn&#39;t.</p><p>That&#39;s the layer M2P works on with banks, NBFCs, and fintechs across this ecosystem — from <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/turing-core-banking/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">core banking</a> and <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/kyc-suite/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">KYC</a> to <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/loan-origination-system/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">lending</a>, <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/recon360/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">reconciliation</a>, and <a href="https://m2pfintech.com/frm-aml/?utm_source=neobank&amp;utm_medium=blg&amp;utm_campaign=aug">fraud and risk management</a> — so the neobanks building on top of it can focus on the customer experience.</p><p>Want to talk about your neobanking journey? Reach us at <a href="mailto:business@m2pfintech.com">business@m2pfintech.com</a>.</p><p><a href="https://m2pfintech.com/newsletter/"><em><strong>Subscribe</strong></em></a><em><strong> to our newsletter and get the latest fintech news, views, and insights, directly to your inbox.</strong></em></p><p><em><strong>Follow us on </strong></em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/m2pfintech/mycompany/"><em><strong>LinkedIn</strong></em></a><em><strong> and </strong></em><a href="https://twitter.com/m2pfintech"><em><strong>Twitter</strong></em></a><em><strong> for insightful fintech tales curated for curious minds like you.</strong></em></p>

Tag: "Sme Banking (10)"

Product

About

Compliance

Resources