Lexicon
PPI
also known as: prepaid payment instrument
India’s regulatory category for stored-value instruments — wallets, prepaid cards, vouchers — licensed and supervised by the RBI. The PPI era (roughly 2010–2017) was India’s first mass fintech wave — the world cut-0102’s scar was earned in — and its 2017–18 full-KYC mandate was the sector’s extinction event: the reference case for what happens to lightly-regulated balance-holders at scale.