For decades, banks held merchant relationships without truly understanding them. Kabeer Jain, Co-founder and CTO of Mintoak, believes that gap wasn’t a data problem — it was an engagement problem. His company sits quietly beneath the surface of banking infrastructure, transforming dormant transaction data into live business intelligence and converting one-time payment touchpoints into continuous merchant relationships. As UPI commoditizes payments across India, Jain sees a widening opportunity upstream. In this conversation, he explains why the real battle for SME financial services is just beginning — and why banks, not fintechs, will win it.
Co-founder and CTO
Mintoak
CISO Forum: Banks have always had merchant relationships. What was fundamentally broken in that model that Mintoak was built to fix?
Kabeer Jain: Banks have always had the merchant relationship through trust and distribution. What was missing was a technology-led engagement layer. The model was largely transactional, with limited ongoing interaction. There was no unified platform for continuously engaging SMEs or for understanding their businesses in real time. Mintoak solves this by powering a white-labelled merchant platform for banks that converts a static relationship into a continuous, deeper, and data-led engagement model.
CISO Forum: You describe Mintoak as an infrastructure layer. What does that actually mean for a bank that plugs you in? What changes on day one versus month six?
Kabeer Jain: Mintoak is a modular, cloud-native platform that integrates with a bank’s existing systems and evolves as needed. On day one, banks get a fully functional merchant platform with payments, dashboards, and reconciliation across mobile and web.
By month six, the platform expands with additional services, stronger data pipelines, and deeper use cases. Banks move from enabling payments to driving merchant lifecycle management. We also provide the tools and infrastructure for campaigns and portfolio engagement at scale.
CISO Forum: Transaction data is powerful, but banks have had it for years without acting on it. How does Mintoak turn that dormant data into actual credit and cross-sell decisions?
Kabeer Jain: The gap has been in usability, not availability. We structure and standardize transaction data and make it available at the merchant level in near real time. This turns payment data into a live indicator of business performance. It strengthens existing credit and cross-sell engines by adding high-frequency signals, making decisions more contextual and timely.
CISO Forum: UPI democratised payments, but has it also commoditized them? Where does Mintoak’s value begin, where UPI’s ends?
Kabeer Jain: UPI has democratised access to digital payments and significantly expanded merchant adoption. Payments, however, are just the starting point. They create the foundation for deeper engagement. Mintoak’s role begins by helping banks move beyond payments into merchant servicing, value-added services, engagement, and monetization, with payments acting as the entry point.
CISO Forum: A Tier 2 kirana owner and a mid-size urban retailer have very different needs. How does a single SaaS platform serve both without compromising depth for either?
Kabeer Jain: We focus on building a configurable platform, not separate products. A kirana merchant gets a simple, mobile-first experience. A mid-size retailer gains deeper capabilities through web interfaces such as reconciliation and multi-outlet management. The same platform adapts across segments, allowing banks to serve diverse merchant needs without complexity.
CISO Forum: Banks are notoriously slow to adopt new technology internally. What’s the real sales cycle and implementation challenge when you’re selling infrastructure to a PSU or private bank?
Kabeer Jain: Banks operate in a regulated, high-stakes environment, so diligence is expected. Successful implementation depends on seamless integration, strong alignment with compliance, and phased rollouts. The cycle is rigorous, but banks are increasingly aligned on the need for faster platform modernization through the right partners.
CISO Forum: Traditional credit underwriting relies on balance sheets and collateral. How confident are you that transaction-based models can fully replace that, especially through economic downturns?
Kabeer Jain: Transaction-based models are an important addition, not a replacement. They bring real-time visibility and behavioral insights, while traditional models capture structural risk. The future is a hybrid approach in which both work together to improve decision accuracy, especially through cycles.
CISO Forum: Five years from now, will banks still be the primary interface for SME financial services, or is Mintoak quietly building the layer that makes the bank itself optional?
Kabeer Jain: Banks will remain the primary interface. Mintoak enables banks to become stronger, technology-led platforms for their merchant ecosystem. We enable banks to deepen their role in the merchant ecosystem by enabling stronger engagement, better data visibility, and more relevant offerings.
