India’s MSME Credit Gap Exceeds INR 60 Lakh Crore, Says Bain & Company Report

A new report by Bain & Company and NPCI Bharat BillPay Limited (NBBL), titled India’s Next Growth Frontier: B2B Commerce, Payments, and Credit and released at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, highlights that while India has digitized individual building blocks of its business ecosystem, cross-platform connectivity gaps continue to constrain capital access and create operational inefficiencies. Saurabh Trehan, Partner and India Head of Financial Services Practice at Bain & Company, noted that B2B workflows remain largely fragmented, while Dr. Noopur Chaturvedi, MD & CEO of NBBL, emphasized that the future of B2B commerce relies on interoperability to connect invoices, payments, reconciliation, and financing.

The Cost of Disconnection for Businesses and MSMEs:
Fragmented information flows and disconnected workflows impose heavy costs on Indian enterprises and MSMEs:

Reconciliation Strain: Finance teams spend 30%–40% of their bandwidth on transaction matching, invoice processing, payment follow-ups, and exception handling.

Credit Deficit: Formal credit supply of ~INR 34 lakh crore meets only part of an estimated ~INR 92 lakh crore MSME debt demand. Smaller enterprises face an ~INR 60 lakh crore formal gap, with formal channels satisfying only 30%–40% of their debt demand.

Delayed Payments: Approximately INR 8.1 lakh crore of MSME receivables remain locked in delayed payments.

Unlocking Efficiency Through a Centralized Interoperable Layer:
The report identifies a connected digital ecosystem as a critical enabler for India’s formal business sector, an engine valued at over INR 130 lakh crore that contributes around 45% of the country’s GVA. A central, interoperable layer could digitize the order-to-cash cycle via standardized APIs, automate reconciliation across more than 20 crore monthly GST e-invoices, and turn buyer-confirmed invoices into financeable records for cash-flow-based underwriting. When layered with advanced analytics and agentic AI, this infrastructure could orchestrate the entire trade lifecycle and serve as India’s primary B2B operating system.