Mumbai: NPCI Bharat BillPay has proposed a centralised digital infrastructure to connect invoices, payments, reconciliation and financing, to fix the biggest constraints on MSMEs – the difficulty of turning sales into cash and cash flows into credit.The system could help address the MSME sector’s Rs 60 lakh crore formal credit gap while reducing the friction involved in collecting and matching payments.The proposed infrastructure would digitise the order-to-cash cycle through standardised APIs and automate reconciliation across more than 20 crore monthly GST e-invoices. Buyer-confirmed invoices could become financeable records, allowing lenders to assess borrowers on the strength of their cash flows rather than relying only on collateral. A common information layer could also reduce the mismatches that contribute to delays in MSME receivables.According to a report by NPCI Bharat BillPay and Bain & Company, formal credit of around Rs 34 lakh crore meets only part of an estimated Rs 92 lakh crore demand for MSME debt, leaving a gap of around Rs 60 lakh crore. The shortage is greatest among smaller enterprises, where formal channels meet only 30% to 40% of debt demand.Payment delays add to the problem. Around Rs 8.1 lakh crore of MSME receivables remain locked up in delayed payments, according to the report. Finance teams spend 30% to 40% of their time on reconciliation and transaction matching, including invoice processing, payment follow-ups and exception handling.The underlying problem is less a lack of digital components than their inability to talk to one another. India has digitised many parts of its business ecosystem, but fragmented information flows between platforms continue to impose costs on businesses and restrict their access to capital.Bain & Company partner Saurabh Trehan said the next stage of B2B digitisation would require greater connectivity between business systems, payment providers, banks, financiers and public systems. “India’s next chapter of B2B transformation is not only about moving money faster; it is about making the underlying transaction visible, verifiable, and actionable across the ecosystem,” he said.The proposed layer would provide the common infrastructure for these connections. Advanced analytics and agentic AI could then be built on top of it, providing cash-flow intelligence, dynamic risk scoring, agentic credit underwriting and open-market intelligence.NBBL MD & CEO Noopur Chaturvedi said interoperability would be central to B2B commerce as businesses digitise their operations. “The future of B2B commerce will be built on interoperability,” she said. A standardised and connected system could link invoices, payments, reconciliation and financing while improving access to credit for underserved MSMEs, she said.
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The opportunity extends beyond credit. India’s formal business sector is worth more than Rs 130 lakh crore and contributes around 45% of the country’s GVA, according to the report. A connected digital ecosystem is identified as one of four enablers that could help raise the sector’s productivity.
