Account Aggregator is emerging as the foundation of India’s open finance architecture

By enabling secure, consent-based financial data sharing, the Account Aggregator framework is laying the groundwork for interoperable financial services. It shifts open finance from a concept to regulated infrastructure that fintechs and traditional institutions can build upon.

Account Aggregation (AA) is the key data layer in DPI / India stack which is growing significantly after a muted first couple of years.

The reason for tepid growth was due to low awareness on part of citizens and readiness on the FI side. Recent trends are very encouraging, and the much-touted next UPI moment is slowly but surely coming to fruition.

So What Changed Between 2021/22 & 2024/25?

AA started and continues to be embedded in the digital journeys of FIs. Citizens who were traditionally accustomed to sharing their bank statements and investment details in pdf needed to be educated on the advantages of using AA rails. This amounted to “friction” / “apprehension” in the minds of citizens unsure of how AA helps them.

Wealth managers and digital-native lenders were the first set of FIs to socialize AA as they quickly realized the cost savings accruing to them. Also, the fraud and error-free information stack ensured zero wastage of bandwidth.

The private sector banks and other hybrid NBFCs followed suit with the swift build of digital products and simultaneously, training their own sales and credit teams about AA and its advantages. The public sector banks are not far behind in this race to adopt. As of March, 2026, we can say with certainty and assurance that there is a strong push from the CXOs of FIs to use AA as the default information source for all financial services. We will, by 2027, witness a 90%+ AA coverage across all products in India.

Source: Data collected from all AAs.

The above table brings out AA’s growth trajectory over the past 3+ years.  Notwithstanding these volumes, the coverage still is in the low single digits, which in turn puts the focus on potential.

With key initiatives such as “enabling Joint ownership accounts”, “EPFO & ITR” as data types, we can conservatively estimate a 60% m-o-m growth in volumes for the next 12-18 months.

Why is it “Open Finance” & Not “Open Banking”?

Unlike the West, where API based data pulls are restricted to participating banks, India leapfrogged with wholistic coverage that not just includes Banks but also depositories (for equities and many other financial instruments), RTAs (for mutual funds), CRAs (for NPS), GSTN for indirect tax data etc.

The completeness of financial data and the attendant advantages of triangulation etc makes the underwriting or investment advisory process, extremely efficient and inclusive.

Digital Public Infrastructure – DPI

AA has been recognized as a key pillar in the DPI construct and hence, critical for financial services in India. As the licensed and secure pipe for sourcing and delivery of confidential financial information based on explicit consent approved by citizens, AA has emerged as the trusted infra for FIs. Citizens, conscious of vulnerabilities in providing access to their SMS/email to third parties, are increasingly shifting to AA.

From a small set of 3-4 use cases / application for AA sourced data, the stakeholders are innovating continuously to replace traditional slow processes with AA rails. For instance, collections has benefited significantly with recurring consent thru AA – timing the e-Nach to minimize hardships for the borrower and also increase the success rate of collecting the EMI.  Identification of mule accounts and portfolio level review of borrowers etc are some of the other strong use cases that have emerged in the recent quarters.

To summarize, AA ticks all the right boxes for citizens, FIs and regulators for democratizing credit access, secure sharing of data and compliance with DPDP regulations as the first consent manager in India.