Gujarat International Finance Tec City (Gift City) has inked an agreement with Fintech Association of Japan (FAJ) to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the fintech domain.

On Thursday they announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for conducting programmes related to international financial services, promoting GIFT City as a fintech hub in India, and exposing young innovators in the fintech domain to opportunities in India and Japan.

GIFT City and FAJ will also organise bootcamps, hackathons, and incubation and acceleration programmes focused on fintech areas such as payments, lending, financial planning, insurance technology, regulatory technology, wealth management and trade processing, among others, a statement said.

The entrepreneurial programmes will also focus on financial inclusion, cyber security, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and human augmentation.

Tapan Ray, Managing Director and Group CEO, Gift City, said, "The association with FAJ aims to strengthen and create more value for the entities in GIFT City that will further spread awareness, knowledge and empowerment in the fintech domain. India has a history of adopting disruptive financial technologies at a much faster rate than several developed nations, and I am sure the coming years will be dominated by fintech firms operating from GIFT City."

FAJ’s vice-chair Takeshi Kito said, "Japan and India have been building strategic partnerships in various fields, and in the financial sector. Japan-India Financial Cooperation Dialogue had been held and it was upgraded to higher level called Japan-India Finance Dialogue this year.

“This shows our bilateral financial cooperation becomes ever more important in the recent years and I believe fintech will take an important part in it. The signing of this MoU further strengthens ties between the fintech ecosystems of both countries, and we will proactively contribute to the development of GIFT City.”