Industry expertise

Fintech market research in India

Adoption, trust and UX research for payments, lending and wealth apps.

Quick answer

Market Research India is a specialist fintech research consultancy in India. We interview app users, merchants, smes in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Odia and English, with field teams in 50 cities and 4 methods matched to how this sector actually buys.

Proposal in 24 hours
Scoped, itemised and fixed-fee.
50 cities, 14 languages
Our own supervised field teams.
Senior-led, NDA-first
A research director on every project.

2,400+

Projects delivered

Cities with field teams

Industries covered

Indian languages

The decisions we help you make

UPI made payments instant and free, so Indian fintech now competes on trust and on the three screens between intent and completion. Drop-off is rarely about pricing; it is usually about a document the user cannot find at eleven at night.

What builds trust in a new app?
How is UPI changing behaviour?
Why do users drop off at sign-up?
Where exactly does onboarding lose the user, and is it a friction problem or a trust problem?
Which merchant segment will pay for value-added services once payments themselves are free?

Each of these is a decision with a cost attached, which is why we design backwards from them rather than forwards from a questionnaire.

Who we talk to, and how we reach them

Most research disappoints at recruitment, not at analysis. These three audiences each need their own frame, their own screener and their own incentive logic.

App users
Recruited from verified panels with screening on actual app usage in the last 30 days, transaction frequency and any abandoned sign-up, with Tier 2 and first-time digital users boosted.
Merchants
Sampled from street-level merchant listings and acquirer frames, screened on monthly digital transaction value, acceptance mix and the number of apps live at the counter.
SMEs
Drawn from GST and cluster frames, screened on turnover, credit usage and whether the respondent controls the banking and payments stack.

Interviews run in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Odia and English, with every questionnaire translated and back-translated before fieldwork. Moderators and interviewers are briefed on the fintech category itself, not handed a script — which is the difference between a respondent answering politely and a respondent explaining themselves.

Methods that fit this sector

Twenty methods are available; these four earn their place in this sector most often, and for specific reasons.

What a typical study looks like

This is what a mid-sized study in this sector usually looks like. Smaller qualitative reads and larger tracking programmes scale from here.

Indicative scope — fintech study

Typical sample: n=1,500 app users across metro and Tier 2, 300 merchant intercepts and 20 usability sessions on the live onboarding flow
Who we interview: App users, Merchants, SMEs — each recruited against a separate screener rather than drawn from one general sample.
Core methods: Online Surveys, In-Depth Interviews, Ethnographic Research, Customer Satisfaction & NPS
Fieldwork window: 3–4 weeks
Standard deliverables: Real-time dashboards, Cross-tabs, Executive summary, Transcripts
Signature output: A screen-by-screen drop-off diagnostic separating trust causes from friction causes
Lead time: 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief

Compliance, ethics and data quality

Research in this sector carries obligations that a generic fieldwork house will not have thought about. These are the ones we build into the protocol before the first interview is scheduled.

No credentials, ever
Interviewers never ask for PINs, OTPs, passwords, card numbers or UPI handles, and usability sessions run on test accounts rather than the respondent's own money.
KYC documents out of scope
Where onboarding is studied we discuss the experience of uploading a document. We do not collect, view or store the documents themselves.
No financial advice
Researchers do not comment on products, rates or suitability, and respondents are told clearly that this is research rather than a sales or advisory call.
Verification you can audit
Every app user and sme we count is screened against a written definition, de-duplicated, GPS- and timestamp-logged in the field, and re-contacted on a 10% back-check with 10% of audio audited by a supervisor who did not run the interview.

What we will not do on a fintech study

We will not substitute an audience without telling you, quietly loosen a screener to hit a quota, interview anyone who has not understood what they are consenting to, or move identifiable personal data outside India without your written agreement. If the fieldwork cannot be done properly, we say so at proposal stage rather than at debrief.

How we work

Our research process

01
Discovery
We turn your business question into clear research objectives.
02
Design
Sampling, method, questionnaire and discussion guides, translated into local languages.
03
Fieldwork
Supervised field teams with GPS, audio and back-check quality control.
04
Analysis
Statistical and thematic analysis by senior researchers.
05
Insight
Board-ready reports, dashboards and workshops with clear recommendations.

Where the sector concentrates

The Indian cities that matter most for fintech

Fintech is concentrated rather than spread: one city carries most of the sector's weight, so we start there and add the metros that supply the rest of the demand. Each page covers fintech research in that city specifically.

Before you brief us

Frequently asked questions

What does a fintech research project cost in India?

Cost follows the sample, the seniority of the audience and the number of cities. Reaching app users costs a fraction of what it costs to reach smes, so the audience mix moves the number far more than the headline interview count. Send a brief and you get a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.

Which cities should a fintech study cover?

Start where the sector concentrates — Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad — then add markets that match your distribution rather than the national map. Most clients run four to eight cities so results can be compared side by side.

How do you make sure respondents are genuinely merchants?

Each audience has its own written screener and its own frame. Respondents are de-duplicated against past projects, fieldwork is GPS- and timestamp-logged, 10% are re-contacted on a back-check and 10% of audio is audited by a supervisor who did not conduct the interview.

How long does a fintech study take?

Fieldwork of the scope described above runs 3–4 weeks, and the whole project is typically 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief. Fieldwork usually begins five to seven working days after sign-off, once screeners and translations are approved.

Which methods suit fintech research best?

For this sector we most often use online surveys, in-depth interviews, ethnographic research, customer satisfaction & nps. The right combination depends on whether you need to size something, explain it or test it — a brief that names the decision gets a sharper design than one that names a method.

What safeguards apply to fintech fieldwork?

Interviewers never ask for PINs, OTPs, passwords, card numbers or UPI handles, and usability sessions run on test accounts rather than the respondent's own money. Alongside that, all personal data is collected on informed consent, held in India, pseudonymised before analysis and deleted on an agreed schedule, in line with the DPDP Act, 2023 and the ESOMAR code.

Sector at a glance

Hub cities: 1
Audiences covered: 3
Fieldwork window: 3–4 weeks
Lead time: 6–8 weeks
Proposal: Within 24 hours

See related case studies

Keep exploring

Fintech research, city by city and method by method

Fifty cities, twenty methods and the sectors that sit closest to fintech. Each page is written for that specific combination of market and approach.

Tier 1 metros

Full-scale quantitative fieldwork, viewing-facility groups and senior fintech interviews in the eight largest markets.

Tier 2 growth markets

Forty-two cities where fintech demand is forming fastest, each covered by a supervised local field team.

Show 34 more

Sectors that sit next to this one

These most often appear in the same programme as a fintech study, either as an adjacent market or a shared audience.

All other industries

The rest of the thirty sectors we hold dedicated field and analysis experience in.

Show 17 more

Next step

Make your next fintech decision with evidence.