The Account Aggregator (AA) framework is a consent-based data-sharing layer regulated by RBI. It lets you share your financial data — bank statements, mutual fund holdings, insurance policies, tax returns — from one institution to another with a single tap, without screen-scraping, passwords, or copy-paste.
The old way vs the new way
Before AA, if you wanted a personal loan, you'd download your bank statement as a PDF, email it to the lender, wait for them to upload it into their underwriting system, and hope it wasn't lost. With AA, you authenticate once through your AA app (like Finvu, OneMoney, or NADL), pick the accounts to share, and the lender gets structured JSON data directly from your bank — faster, cleaner, and auditable.
Why it matters
Consent is time-bound and purpose-specific. You can give a lender 30 days of access to your bank statement for a loan application and the access revokes automatically. No ongoing exposure, no shadow data lakes. This is the first time in Indian fintech that data flow is legally bound by user consent in a way that can be enforced.
Live use cases
Cash-flow-based lending for small businesses (using bank statements), instant personal loans (no document upload), portfolio consolidation for wealth apps (pulling mutual fund holdings), insurance underwriting (pulling income data). Every major bank and top fintechs are integrated now.
What's still missing
Tax return data, GST filings, and property records are rolling in gradually. Once those are plumbed in, AA will become the universal financial identity layer for India — the equivalent of what Aadhaar did for identity, but for money.