India, Sept. 15 -- Tier-2 cities are ahead of metros in digital credit adoption, a new index has found, even as bigger cities continue to dominate digital payments. The Digital Credit & Inclusion Index (DCII) 2026, unveiled at the Global Fintech Festival here on September 10 by Dr Rajiv Kumar, Chairman, Pahle India Foundation (PIF), and Vikas Bansal, CEO, Amazon Pay India, showed Tier-2 cities scoring 58.64, against 55.77 for Tier-3 and 53.1 for Tier-1 cities. The trend held across age, gender, income, occupation and education groups.

Developed by PIF with Amazon Pay India, the index is based on a survey of 5,149 respondents across 100 cities in 20 states. India's overall score stood at 55.85 out of 100, placing it in the "Emerging & Ser...