Faster credit reporting may reshape small-ticket fintech lending

Mint that the compliance requirement is especially important for digital personal loans, buy now, pay later (BNPL), and other frequently disbursed unsecured products, where borrowing patterns can shift within days rather than months.“In a traditional monthly reporting cycle, the lifecycle of a 15-day BNPL transaction or a 30-day micro-loan is essentially a blind spot…it begins and ends before the data ever reaches the bureau,” said Aditya B. Chatterjee, managing director of credit bureau Equifax India.And borrowers “used to exploit this particular window of a blind spot in the (bureau reporting) system”, said Sugandh Saxena, chief executive of self-regulatory organization Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE), adding that “fintechs would greatly benefit” from fresher bureau data.That is because digital NBFCs dominate the personal-loan market by volume, accounting for 78% of sanctioned loans in the first nine months of 2025-26, even though their share by value was only 19%, according to FACE data.Credit data from banks, NBFCs, and fintech lenders used to be updated with bureaus on a monthly cycle, but in practice, taking 30-45 days from disbursal to reflection in a borrower’s file.

This lag left lenders working with stale information, creating room for loan stacking and consumer disputes over repayments or closed accounts.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) began tightening the cycle in early 2025 through its 6 January Master Direction on Credit Information Reporting, which required lenders and credit information companies to update records every fortnight.Then, in a July 2025 speech, RBI deputy governor M. Rajeshwar Rao signalled a more ambitious goal of “real-time or near-real-time” reporting to sharpen