Banking for minors: Why its time has come

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently permitted minors aged 10 years or older to independently open and operate savings and term deposit accounts.

- Deepa Vasudevan

In the same week, the Deloitte Global Digital Banking Maturity Survey reported that nine Indian banks were among 40 globally identified digital champions in 2024.

At first glance, these events seem unconnected. But both point to a pivotal shift in India's payment ecosystem over the past decade. Two trends stand out. One, Indians have embraced digital payments with gusto—the rapid adoption of UPI (unified payments interface) as a payment system is both a cause and a consequence of this shift. Two, most retail, day-to-day digital payments are made using a mobile phone app. In volume terms, mobile payments were 37 times net banking payments in 2024-25, but in value terms, the share of mobile payments dropped to less than one-third. This clearly indicates that mobiles are being used for multiple, small-value daily transactions.

India has a smartphone user base of around 700 million and more than 1 billion cellular connections, as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India data as of December. As a country, our collective mobile usage has jumped after covid-19, but the steepest rise is seen in the 10-19-year age group.