AA Community Guidelines - Participation Terms

The Master Directions state that the interactions between the citizen, an account aggregator and an FIP must be backed by appropriate agreements.

Further, the interactions between an FIU and an account aggregator also have to be backed by appropriate agreements.

Legal agreements Implemented as a set of non-uniform, independent bilateral agreements between various parties would make dispute resolution a very inefficient purpose.

The community has therefore evolved a uniform, standard set of terms and conditions, that are directly derived from the RBI Master Directions and bind all AA participants (FIPs, FIUs, AAs) and citizens into a common legally enforceable framework.

This greatly simplifies the operational aspects of having appropriate legal agreements amongst parties and also makes dispute resolution efficient.

They are akin to a multilateral treaty, between all the participants in the AA ecosystem. Each participant independently becomes a signatory to the treaty, rather than two (or more parties) jointly “signing” an agreement amongst themselves.

Sahamati plays a role in the AA ecosystem and is obliged to adhere to astandard set of terms and conditions as well. These are codified in the Participation Terms, much like the terms and conditions binding AAs, FIPs and FIUs as well.
Sahamati itself is also an independent signatory to the Participation Terms.

However, the Participation Terms, unlike other Digital Commons, are a community-driven asset. Feedback from independent signatories may be collated periodically, discussed within the community and an update to the Terms released.

This is akin to version upgrades in the open API specifications (or any other software asset), with a community-managed change management process.

The change management process is being discussed within the community.

“Membership of Sahamati” is meant to enable participation in the workings of Sahamati and to benefit from a set of services that Sahamati offers exclusively only to its members.

An AA participant may become a signatory to the Terms without becoming a member of Sahamati.

However, to become a member of Sahamati, becoming a signatory to the Participation Terms is a prerequisite.

Thus, AA participants may join and leave membership of Sahamati, without it affecting them remaining as a signatory to the Participation Terms.

AA participants therefore have to enter into bilateral commercial agreements (such as between an FIU and an AA), based on negotiations amongst themselves.