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TFS 101: Introduction to Financial Technology
Course Code TFS 101
Course Name Introduction to Financial Technology
Department Computer Science & Finance
Semester Offered Odd (Term 1)
Tuition Hours 30 hours
Course Level Foundational
Pre-requisite -
Co-requisite FTM 101, QMA 101
Course Objective Finance used to be slow, paper-heavy, and gatekept. Then software showed up and rewired everything. This course is about understanding that rewiring at a systems level.

We study how money actually moves in a digital economy: how a tap on your phone triggers authentication, routing, settlement, and reconciliation across multiple institutions in seconds. You will learn the architecture behind mobile payments, digital banking, and API-driven financial infrastructure. India is not just a case study here, it is the lab. Systems like UPI, Aadhaar, Account Aggregator, and ONDC are not incremental innovations. They are public infrastructure that changed how finance is built.

The goal is simple: by the end of this course, you should be able to think like someone who can build financial systems, not just use them.
Course Philosophy This course emphasizes
  • Systems thinking over surface features
  • Building over observing
  • Clarity over buzzwords
Fintech is full of jargon. We will strip it down to primitives. Every concept ties back to a real system you can inspect, break down, and rebuild in your own way.
Course Learning Outcomes Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
  • Explain how digital financial systems work end-to-end, from user action to settlement.
  • Break down fintech products into components such as authentication, ledgering, payments, and APIs.
  • Understand India's digital public infrastructure and why it scaled to a billion users.
  • Design simple fintech workflows that connect users to regulated institutions without holding funds.
  • Build basic fintech prototypes using APIs, data flows, and structured user journeys.
Course Author Sagar Udasi
MSc Statistics and Data Science with Computational Finance from The University of Edinburgh.
Contact: sagar.l.udasi@gmail.com
Course Organiser TBD
No. Lecture Title Concepts Covered Lecture Objective
01 Why Fintech Won (And Banks Didn't See It Coming) Evolution of banking, fintech waves, unbundling of financial services Build context. Students understand why fintech exists and what problems it solved. Sets direction for capstone thinking.
02 What Actually Happens When You Tap “Pay”? Payment flow, authorization, clearing, settlement Ground students in real-world systems. This becomes the base for any fintech product they build.
03 The Stack That Runs India’s Money UPI architecture, NPCI, banks, PSPs Understand India as infrastructure, not market. Critical for building capstone products on top of UPI rails.
04 Identity Is the Real Currency Aadhaar, eKYC, authentication layers Show how identity enables finance. Students learn how onboarding flows are built.
05 The API Economy of Finance APIs, SDKs, integrations, fintech-as-a-service Teach how modern fintech products are assembled, not built from scratch.
06 Banks Are Now Platforms Neobanks, BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service), embedded finance Help students rethink banks as infrastructure providers. Useful for product design decisions.
07 Open Banking: Who Owns Your Data? Account Aggregator framework, consent architecture Introduce data ownership and consent. Directly relevant for building financial tools ethically.
08 Ledger Is Everything Double-entry systems in software, transaction records Students understand the backbone of any financial system they build.
09 Fraud, Trust, and the Dark Side of Fintech Fraud vectors, KYC gaps, scam patterns Make students paranoid in a good way. Helps them design safer products.
10 Credit Without History Alternative data, digital lending, underwriting basics Connect fintech to real economic problems like access to credit.
11 Designing for the Last Billion Users UX for low literacy, trust barriers, language challenges Ground capstone in reality. Students design for actual users, not ideal ones.
12 Building Without Holding Money Regulatory constraints, non-custodial models Critical for capstone. Students learn how to stay compliant while building useful products.
13 Payments UX Is Product Strategy Checkout flows, failure states, retries Students learn that small UX decisions impact real money movement.
14 From Idea to Fintech Prototype Product scoping, MVP thinking, API selection Bridge theory to execution. Students start shaping their capstone product.
15 Debugging Financial Systems Failure cases, reconciliation issues Teach students how systems break and how to fix them.
16 Metrics That Actually Matter in Fintech CAC, LTV, retention, transaction success rate Help students evaluate whether their product is working.
17 Case Study: UPI Apps Dissected Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm teardown Learn from real products. Students identify patterns they can reuse.
18 Building the First Version of Your Product Guided build session Hands-on progress on capstone.
19 Why Most Fintech Startups Fail Unit economics, trust deficit, regulation Build realism. Avoid naive product thinking.
20 Demo, Break, Improve Product demos, feedback loops Push students to ship, test, and iterate their fintech product.
Component Weightage
Capstone Contribution (Product Build & Deployment) 40%
Assignments (API Integration, System Design Tasks) 30%
Quizzes (Conceptual Understanding) 20%
Class Participation & Product Reviews 10%
Type Resource Provider
Lecture Fintech Foundations and Overview University of Hong Kong (Coursera)
Lecture Payments System Design Fintech Engineering Blogs (Stripe, Razorpay)
Reading The Payment Systems in India Reserve Bank of India
Reading India Stack Documentation iSPIRT
Case Study How UPI Works NPCI
Book The FINTECH Book Susanne Chishti