Account Aggregators: India must move from data sharing to fair value creation

Nitin Sawant

India's Account Aggregator (AA) framework has reached a stage few young infrastructures reach: the point where the bills come due. After six years of building technology, compliance and partnerships, standardised pricing is here, benchmarked at Rs 8 for a seven-month bank statement.

It takes effect on November 1, 2026. Before it does, the industry should be clear about one thing: who is benefiting most from this ecosystem, and who should pay for the value being created?

The lending ecosystem is already benefiting

Lending is the most visible beneficiary of AA infrastructure. Access to consent-based financial information lets lenders assess borrowers faster, improve underwriting and spot inconsistencies that suggest fraud.

If real-time information lowers processing costs and strengthens credit decisions, lenders can fairly be asked to contribute towards the infrastructure that makes it possible.

A larger public interest is also at stake. Lenders using AA data to extend formal credit to first-time borrowers are doing exactly what this framework was built for. But inclusion lending is high-volume and small-ticket, and fees are charged per fetch, not by loan size, so they bite hardest where margins are thinnest. Those costs reach borrowers least able to pay, or lenders serve fewer of them. That is how a data fee quietly becomes a tax on inclusion. That said, one principle still holds: sustainable digital public infrastructure cannot depend indefinitely on a small group of participants absorbing the cost of serving the entire ecosystem. The answer to both is the same: share costs in proportion to value, so the lending this framework exists for stays viable.

Standardisation is necessary, but pricing alone is not enough

Until now, commercial arrangements have rested on bilateral negotiations, which created uncertainty and uneven bargaining power. Standardisation makes the economics predictable, which helps AAs plan technology investment, cybersecurity and compliance.

But standardisation should not become an exercise in merely transferring costs from one participant to another. The industry has to be honest about costs on every side: institutions sharing data keep it always available, AAs run consent and connectivity, governance and settlement still need funding. The goal is a model that rewards value creation without pricing participants out.

The bargain has to work in both directions. Pricing assumes the data is reliable and usable. If information needs significant further processing before it can inform a decision, the fee has been collected without the value being delivered. Fees should stay closely tied to service standards: success rates, data quality and the removal of restrictive limits on legitimate data access. The framework already links data-provider fees to service levels; that principle has to be enforced in letter and in spirit, with standards that tighten as the ecosystem matures.

PFM platforms and fintech-enabled advisers face a different challenge

For Personal Financial Management (PFM) platforms and advisory businesses, the picture is more complicated. For a traditional, non-technology-led Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), a modest fee for consolidated information is a good trade against hours of manual collection.

For fintech-enabled RIAs, the economics could be harder. They fetch and refresh data frequently, sometimes daily, for tracking, insights and alerts. If costs rise with fetch frequency and usage, fixed advisory fees come under pressure and smaller customers become less profitable to serve.

None of this is an argument against paying for data infrastructure. It is an argument for pricing that tracks usage and value.

The real question: What value are we creating for the end user?

The industry should stop focusing on the cost of accessing financial information and ask whether it helps customers make better financial decisions. For lenders, faster processing and better underwriting; for consumers, less paperwork and easier access to financial services.

Any AA operator can see the pattern: a small set of users refresh data relentlessly while most fetch occasionally. Frequent refreshes need to translate into real customer benefits; more data does not automatically mean better outcomes. The ecosystem needs safeguards against excessive fetching: fair-use norms and central monitoring will keep the model affordable for the responsible majority, who should not have to subsidise a wasteful few.

In the end, customers should not bear higher costs simply because technology enables more frequent data collection.

Six years of challenges must lead to sustainable growth

The AA ecosystem has spent years resolving integration issues, onboarding institutions, building trust and educating the market, investing in infrastructure before its commercial potential was realised. The foundation is laid; the economics now have to work.

As an operator, I would rather test the new billing and settlement systems with participants and make them mandatory only once they work. A smooth rollout will do as much for trust as the pricing itself. When the periodic reviews arrive, they should draw on published numbers: what the services cost, how much they are used, how well they perform. Facts, not assumptions.

AAs, banks, lenders, technology providers and advisers need an honest dialogue on pricing, service standards and measurable outcomes.

India has shown that digital public infrastructure can transform financial services. The next job is to get its economics equally right.

The future of Account Aggregators will not be determined by the lowest fee or the highest fee. It will be determined by the value created, the trust earned and the fairness with which that value is shared.

Nitin Sawant is CEO, OMS Fintech Account Aggregator Pvt Ltd

The views expressed in this article are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.