💡 What does it take to build a FinTech giant — and where will AI create the next wave of financial innovation?
At Nexus Luxembourg 2026, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder of Paytm, joined Jean-Louis Schiltz and David Shrier for a conversation spanning entrepreneurship, digital payments, regulation, artificial intelligence and Luxembourg’s potential role in the future of European finance.
Looking back at Paytm’s journey, Sharma explains why technology entrepreneurs need to return to first principles and solve fundamental problems. For Paytm, that meant making digital payments accessible even to t...
What Vijay Sharma said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Vijay Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, discussed building fintech giants, starting with solving India's digital payments problem for small merchants using QR codes. He argued that payment is the foundation of fintech, as transaction data enables credit, insurance, and wealth services, and that transaction accounts are superior to bank accounts. He described financial entities as 'franchisees of the regulator,' advocating a cooperative relationship with regulators. Sharma highlighted Paytm's success in India, expansion to Japan and other countries, and expressed hope to bring its model to Luxembourg. He predicted India will lead global technology innovation. He advised entrepreneurs to focus on AI, stating that anything a computer does will be done by AI agents. He praised Luxembourg's regulatory environment, saying it is ahead of other countries and has high potential to become Europe's AI gateway.
Key takeaways
Paytm processes billions of payments daily, solving for the smallest merchants with QR codes.
Paytm has expanded to Japan and other countries, with success.
Luxembourg has the highest probability of becoming Europe's AI gateway, with all stars aligned.
We're going to go right into a fantastic discussion to continue that around building fintech giants. A conversation with Paytm's founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and David Shrier who is professor of practice at Imperial College London moderated by Jean Luis Schultz, senior partner at Schultz and Schultz. Please give them a huge round of applause to welcome them onto our stage. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Minister Ro, for these inspiring words and for setting the tone of the conversation of this afternoon. The three of us are not on stage together because we've known each other for years because we're working together, but we basically have been asked to do this together because we're all part of the advisory board on AI for the financial sector to the minister for which we're very grateful. The subject of our conversation could be AI depending on the time we have but we wanted to deep dive into what makes a fintech giant, how do you build a fintech giant and what's the recipe for success? I already discovered one and that's when I walked with you through these alleys, you know, you're a rockstar in the Indian community and people love you and your challenge is going to be to become a rockstar in the Luxembourg community as well. But more seriously, how do you build a fintech giant nationally first? How did it all start and how what was your journey basically?
I think first of all thank you so much it is privilege to be in company of each of you thank you so much Luxembourg for such a wholehearted welcome here thank you cheers to the Luxembourg first of all. Extraordinary it is well I can say that as a startup as a technology entrepreneur you try to solve for problem in a first principal way typically if you come from let's say financial industry or some other industry you build on top of what exists as a technology entrepreneur you go always first principal way and there then you have some radical or sometime so foundational innovation that just changes the face of all of the category that you are operating in and I think I was privileged as an India we sort of used to not have digital payments and I was able to solve a problem of small merchants. How can you make a payment for a small merchant using a QR code? The humble QR code that became the solution for large mass acquiring. Right now we make billions of payments every day and we solve for smallest of the merchant. Let's say the street side smallest of the merchant individual to receive payments legitimately. Remember the developing nations will become developed nation or the developed nations will grow economy when the flow of the money becomes a formal flow of the money. Here obviously you want the color of money the AML the traceability and all those elements but in the countries like mine you want the formal economy to exist first of all and the payment is the most I would say intimate way of two people to talk to each other in financial lingo that two of you have to trust. So I was privileged. I can say that solve for payment, solve for financial industry. That is the approach that I've taken.
Well, that's the game of the name of the game that because you have a transaction volume that creates data. Then you can underwrite that for credit, insurance, wealth, many other things come on top of it. Typically banks have a relationship on a deposit account or a current account or a check-in account. And in payment industry we have relationship on a transaction account. Now transaction account in my opinion is superior than a bank account because you get to know what this person does insights of abilities of flow of money and so on so forth things. So payment is a foundation of a fintech and that is why fintech companies always will have a one angle of payment most of the time because otherwise you are a bank and there is no doubt about it banks are becoming digital and they are extending themselves and I I rather say the ability of finance to become AI finance also comes from the data that inherently inside it. So payment extends towards fintech extends towards AI.
Cool. Before I can come back to you in terms of future plans and expansion maybe David from an academic point of view, what would you advise your students? What would you advise a young entrepreneur in doing if he wants to set up ultimately a fintech giant a small first of all but then a larger one.
Yeah. No, absolutely. And you know when we when we look across hundreds or thousands of fintech businesses, we try to understand what is the secret of success. You know, I think Vijay has an interesting case study for us to look at, but but that more broadly we we see across other fintech giants. So there are three factors I can call out for you today. One of them is regulatory finesse, right? Regulation in fintech is not something that's just a compliance function. It is a core part of how you build your product and how you build your business. The second is grit and resilience. So it is easy to build a business in a in a boom. They say a rising tide lifts all boats. But what do you do? The mark of a true successful entrepreneur who builds a fintech giant. What do you do when you face adversity? So for example, the the RBI shut down your payments bank which was kind of central to running your business. So in a matter of weeks or months, Paytm was able to pivot large portions of their business in the face of this adversity. It's not something you do in years. You have to move in real time when you face adversity. And grit and resilience is is what makes for scalable entrepreneur. And then lastly, evolution is a really interesting to think about as a fintech entrepreneur and as a manager. So, you know, in some companies you have the founder CEOs and then they sort of bring in a professional CEO who then runs the business. So, Sergey Brin and Larry Page brought in Eric Schmidt to run Google and build Google. But Vijay didn't do that. Vijay was the one person in a room thinking up the idea and he's still running the business today. You bless you for that. But he has gone through an evolution from being a promoter, being someone who comes up with the idea and has to espouse it to being an operator, someone who can manage thousands of people and and sprawling operations. And so building those skills as a manager to evolve as your business evolves is something else that particularly if you want to be a founder CEO to scale that you need to adopt.
There's one one expression you were using and that is regulatory finesse which would could become a new buzzword and I have the pleasure of welcoming also Mr. Clax the head of the regulator here in the room. So I'm glad he could listen to you.
I think I think financial systems are or entities in financial industry are I call them franchisee of regulator because practically the responsibility of their operations sits with the regulator. They're fit and proper their operations everything and now that approach lot of time have saved me or created a correct relationship structure of a fintech with regulator. If you think yourself as a I'm independent and I'm here for change and I'm doing something good and it conflicts with let's say the ambition or a way that regulator is thinking it creates fireworks. The better way to do it is that you try to think yourself that you are an extension and a responsibility of extension of the regulator and then not just peace but the changes happen much better way than we see it.
Yeah well we were just discussing this before. So back in in 2014, there's a little known secret about Bitcoin. Everyone thinks of Bitcoin as this disruptive thing that throws out the old and brings in the new. But actually in 2014, it was going to be shut down because it was trying to do that. And instead, the insiders partnered with the regulators and Bitcoin was allowed to continue to eventually evolve an entire cryptocurrency industry. And John Louie was actually integral to that conversation. And Luxembourg build on that with the blockchain laws of course which have been enacted by the Luxembourg parliament the initiative of the minister of finance.
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Sharma, V. (2026, September 23). Building FinTech Giants: A Conversation with Paytm’s Founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma [Interview transcript]. Nexus Luxembourg. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/2918397/
