As India’s digital payments ecosystem moves into its next phase, the focus is shifting from access and velocity to intelligence, resilience and trust. Kiwi is engineering its platform for this transition by rethinking how credit, risk and security operate in real time within UPI-native experiences.
In an exclusive conversation with Express Computer, Akshat Kansal, CTO, Kiwi, shares their technology roadmap for 2026, built on four core pillars: event-driven architecture, UPI-native credit infrastructure, AI-first decision systems and zero-trust security. Together, these elements are designed to make credit feel as seamless and instantaneous as traditional UPI payments, while operating reliably at population scale.
As we move into 2026, what core technology pillars will guide Kiwi’s roadmap for scaling secure, seamless and compliant digital payments, particularly within a rapidly expanding digital credit ecosystem?
As India’s digital credit ecosystem accelerates, Kiwi’s 2026 technology vision is built on four core pillars focused on creating systems that are real-time, intelligent and invisible. The first pillar is a fully event-driven architecture where payments, risk checks, credit scoring, fraud detection and user nudges operate as independent streams. This allows instant reactions to customer behaviour, network conditions and external signals, ensuring every transaction feels effortless even on a large scale. The second pillar is our UPI-native and credit-ready infrastructure designed to provide predictable, fault-tolerant and sub-second credit on UPI experiences that feel as smooth as standard UPI. The third pillar is our AI-first platform strategy, where artificial intelligence drives every decision, from predicting repayment patterns and understanding spending behaviour to identifying fraud signals before they occur. The fourth pillar is our zero-trust security and strong compliance culture that relies on device trust, continuous verification, automated threat detection and rigorous governance. By embedding security as a design principle, we ensure safety without slowing innovation. Together, these pillars enable Kiwi to deliver secure, compliant and intuitive digital payments for India’s next ten million credit users.
Kiwi has invested heavily in building automation-led systems in-house. What have been some of the most critical engineering frameworks or architectural decisions that enable you to maintain speed, reliability and resilience at scale?
From the beginning, we believed that India’s next generation payments infrastructure must rely on automation rather than manual effort. At Kiwi, we often say our systems work harder than our engineers, and that is intentional. Automation acts as our silent co-founder, making every flow predictable, recoverable and continuously optimised. A key architectural choice was adopting a cloud-native and horizontally scalable setup. Running on EKS with active disaster recovery, multi-availability zone redundancy, automated rollouts and self-healing capabilities allows us to manage sudden UPI spikes with complete confidence. Payments can surge within seconds, and our systems scale just as quickly. We also built our own high-performance event ingestion and campaign engine with extremely fast evaluation, enabling thousands of personalised campaigns and risk models to run in parallel without losing speed. Every offer, nudge and decision is timely and based on real behaviour. Automation extends into engineering as well. Using infrastructure as code, automated security checks, staged deployments and continuous performance scoring, we allow machines to manage routine tasks so engineers can focus on complex problem-solving. This is what enables a lean team to deliver reliability at an enterprise scale.
How is Kiwi currently utilising AI/ML for credit assessment, fraud detection, personalisation or operational automation? Looking ahead, which AI-driven use cases do you expect to become mainstream in fintech by 2026?
AI has become the neural layer of the Kiwi platform, powering how we assess credit, detect fraud and personalise user journeys. Our credit assessment models now learn from behavioural and transactional patterns rather than relying only on bureau information, giving a deeper understanding of user intent and capacity. In fraud detection, AI allows us to work at a level of detail traditional rule-based systems cannot achieve. Every user has a unique behavioural signature based on device activity, usage patterns and transaction velocity, and our models constantly learn what is normal for them. Any deviation is detected in real time, often before the user notices anything unusual. AI has also transformed personalisation. With our real-time event engine, every journey becomes adaptive and contextual. Rewards, nudges, spending limits and repayment reminders are tailored to each individual, making the experience feel designed for them. Looking towards 2026, we expect AI to reshape fintech through autonomous credit engines that deliver the best product instantly, predictive decision systems that anticipate behaviour, and self-defending platforms that evolve rules to combat new fraud patterns. The future of fintech will be shaped by adaptive intelligence, and Kiwi is already building for that future.
With cyber threats becoming increasingly sophisticated, what does Kiwi’s 2026 security blueprint look like? How do you ensure the right balance between frictionless user experience and stringent security and regulatory compliance?
Security in financial technology has always been about balancing two opposing forces: the desire for a frictionless user experience and the obligation for uncompromising protection. At Kiwi, we see security as a design aesthetic – elegant, invisible, and deeply integral. Our 2026 blueprint is rooted in the belief that the safest systems are the ones users never feel.
Our move towards a zero-trust, identity-first architecture has been foundational. Every device, every session, every API call must continuously prove itself. This includes multi-signal verification device integrity, IP reputation, SIM binding, behavioural biometrics, and telco signals, all stitched together into a dynamic risk assessment. The result is a protective shield that feels effortless but is incredibly sophisticated behind the scenes.
We also operate with a strict posture of compliance. We are PCI DSS, SOC2, and ISO 27001 certified, and our internal governance frameworks treat security as non-negotiable. Automated access reviews, internal firewalls, continuous monitoring, and daily VAPT cycles ensure that we evolve as fast as the threat landscape around us.
Credit-on-UPI has witnessed strong uptake. Which technology interventions, across user experience, orchestration and backend systems, have been most impactful in shaping Kiwi’s customer experience journey? What innovations can customers expect in the coming year?
Credit on UPI is not just a new feature; it represents a major behavioural shift. For the first time, users can enjoy the ease of UPI with the flexibility of credit without changing any habit. Delivering this experience at scale required deep innovation across our platform. A key breakthrough is our ultra-low latency payments engine. Each credit transaction moves through multiple layers of risk checks, issuer logic, NPCI validation and internal models, yet the experience feels instant. AI predicts success chances and adjusts the flow in real time to prevent user frustration. Real-time personalisation is another powerful capability. Offers, rewards, spending boosters and product nudges are shown only when they matter, creating a sense of recognition rather than promotion. Our onboarding and recovery journeys are built with empathy and supported by instant verification, intelligent chat support and automated dispute identification to reduce user effort. In 2026, customers can look forward to personalised credit lines, dynamic EMI on UPI, predictive credit upgrades and AI-driven checkout suggestions. Our vision is simple. Payments should anticipate the user, not wait for them.
From embedded finance to real-time data infrastructure and identity-first security models, which broader technology trends do you believe will redefine fintech innovation in 2026, and where will Kiwi be focusing its efforts?
Fintech in 2026 will be shaped by three major forces. The first is the rise of embedded finance, where credit, insurance and personalised financial tools will exist naturally inside everyday apps. Kiwi aims to make credit on UPI the embedded credit layer for India that is intelligent, compliant and accessible to all. The second force is the shift to real-time data infrastructure. Fintech companies will rely on streaming platforms, instant scoring and dynamic segmentation. Batch processing will fade as real-time understanding of every customer’s action becomes essential. Kiwi’s event-driven data foundation and cohort engine position us strongly for this future. The third trend is the evolution of identity-first security, where authentication moves beyond OTP and uses behavioural and device-level intelligence. As fraud becomes more dynamic, security must become more adaptive. Kiwi is investing in device trust, telecom signals, behavioural biometrics and continuous risk evaluation. A unifying theme across all these shifts is the rise of AI as the invisible operating system of fintech. AI will run payments, credit, risk, fraud, operations and support with quiet intelligence. The future will belong not to the fastest systems but to the smartest, and Kiwi is building for that world today.