This recognition reinforces India’s leadership in building population-scale digital public infrastructure rooted in user consent and trust
India, June 05, 2026: In a major development for India’s digital financial infrastructure, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has officially recognised Sahamati as the Self-Regulatory Organisation (SRO) for the country’s Account Aggregator (AA) ecosystem. Sahamati serves as the industry alliance and ecosystem coordinator for India’s AA framework. The recognition establishes a formal industry-led mechanism to strengthen governance, operational discipline, and ecosystem-wide coordination as adoption of consent-based financial data sharing accelerates across the country.
India’s Account Aggregator ecosystem has rapidly emerged as one of the world’s largest consent-based financial data-sharing networks. Today, the ecosystem includes over 1120 live regulated financial entities, 176 Financial Information Providers (FIPs), 1020 Financial Information Users (FIUs), and 17 operational Account Aggregators. The framework has facilitated over 450 million consent requests fulfilled, enabled more than 294 million linked accounts, and now supports over 290 million monthly data shares across lending, insurance, wealth management, and personal finance use cases.
The Account Aggregator framework is a key pillar of India’s broader Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), enabling individuals and businesses to securely access and share financial data with their explicit consent. Developed through collaboration across financial sector regulators including RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA, the framework is increasingly being recognised globally as a pioneering model for consent-led digital infrastructure.
The AA ecosystem is the cross-sectoral financial data-sharing framework bringing together regulated entities across banking, securities, insurance, taxation, and pensions under a common consent-based architecture. Sahamati is the first SRO of its kind in India to represent a cross-sectoral ecosystem spanning multiple financial regulators, reflecting the unique collaborative architecture of the Account Aggregator framework.
As SRO-AA, Sahamati will function as a neutral, industry-led institution responsible for developing operational and technical standards, facilitating dispute resolution, supporting interoperability, strengthening ecosystem discipline, and enabling coordinated engagement across participants.
The RBI framework for recognising SROs for the AA ecosystem underscored the need for stronger institutional mechanisms to support responsible innovation, improve transparency, strengthen consumer trust, and ensure the orderly and sustainable growth of India’s consent-based data-sharing infrastructure.
The development comes at a pivotal moment for the AA ecosystem as it moves from infrastructure creation to ecosystem scale, with adoption accelerating across banking, lending, insurance, wealth management, and emerging digital finance use cases.
R. Gandhi, Former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India and Chairman, Sahamati, said, “The Account Aggregator framework represents a fundamental shift in how financial information is accessed and shared in the digital economy. As data becomes central to financial participation, frameworks that balance innovation with accountability will become increasingly important.
The establishment of an SRO introduces an important layer of institutional trust for the ecosystem. It creates a mechanism through which industry participants can collectively uphold standards, strengthen responsible market conduct, and ensure that the ecosystem evolves in a manner that remains secure, interoperable, and consumer-centric.”
B.G. Mahesh, CEO, Sahamati, said, “India’s Account Aggregator ecosystem is among the earliest examples globally of how digital public infrastructure can enable consent-led data mobility at population scale. What makes this moment significant is not just the scale of adoption, but the emergence of governance models that can help ecosystems evolve responsibly while preserving openness and innovation.
India is demonstrating that digital public infrastructure is not just about building rails for scale, but also institutions for trust. As financial ecosystems become increasingly interconnected, our role as SRO is to help create shared accountability across participants and ensure that India’s open finance journey continues to remain inclusive, interoperable, and globally relevant.”
As the Account Aggregator ecosystem expands across sectors and use cases, the SRO framework is expected to play a defining role in shaping how open finance evolves in India. The move further strengthens India’s position as a global leader in building population-scale digital public infrastructure that combines innovation, regulatory alignment, and user-centric data governance.
About Sahamati:
Sahamati is the cross-sectoral industry alliance and Self-regulatory Organisation (SRO) for India’s Account Aggregator (AA) ecosystem in India. Sahamati anchors participatory governance mechanisms for the ecosystem and ensures that all stakeholders, financial institutions, technology providers, and regulators collaborate to drive adoption and innovation. Sahamati works to accelerate ecosystem readiness, strengthen technology infrastructure, and enhance customer trust in consent-based financial data-sharing. For more information, check sahamati.org.in