Sahamati working on framework for fair use of AA consent

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Sahamati, a non-profit that promotes the account aggregator (AA) system, is working on a framework for fair use of AA consent. This is to ensure that financial information of users is used only for the stated purpose. The AA framework gives users control over their financial data and lets them share it in a machine-readable format with parties interested in providing services.

Sahamati recently hosted an open-house discussion on the fair use of AA consent, where it explored guidelines for it. “As the AA ecosystem grows, newer types of financial information user (FIU) licences and newer use cases for data fetches will continue to grow. Sahamati discussed guardrails to protect against unreasonable data pulls and potential breaches,” BG Mahesh, cofounder and CEO of Sahamati, told ET.

Financial Information Users (FIUs), like banks, lending agencies, non-bank financial companies (NBFCs), etc. can receive digitally signed data from Financial Information Providers (FIPs). FIUs can use the data for purposes declared in the consent artefact or data-sharing agreement.

As of July, some 12.66 million people had linked their accounts to AA, and around 14.84 million account holders had given consent to share their financial data with FIUs. Sahamati is aiming to get consent from 100 million account holders by September. “All the large banks are working towards using AA in most of their products.

It is the FIUs who must start promoting AA among their customers and awareness programmes must be carried out,” Mahesh said. “It has been growing by 30-40% on a month-on-month basis. The growth rate must increase,” he said.