In order to avoid inconsistent legal terms across the various similarly placed entities in the AA ecosystem, and to make legal compliance easier for participants, Sahamati anchored the Sahamati AA Ecosystem Participation Terms. This uniform, multipartite contractual arrangement allowed participants to sign up to a set of common terms that outlined the roles and responsibilities of each participant, viz. FIPs, FIUs, and AAs.
This construct was conceptualised to be a set of uniform, common, non-commercial, standard terms to improve efficiencies in the AA ecosystem by reducing the hurdles of complex legal negotiations, clearly defining the interdependencies and interlinkages, and a commitment to adhere to common standards and protocols.
As an industry-driven body, the Participation Terms helped bring together various participants in the AA ecosystem in its fold, with a view to nurturing, developing, and evolving the ecosystem together with the participants.
The multipartite contractual arrangement framework acted as a fair, superior, appropriate, and right design for efficiency, network benefits, and ensuring a level playing field among all the participants while protecting customer interests. It also provided the comfort of uniformity, fair play, and common roles and responsibilities of the participants as well as adherence to evolving standards and protocols, be it regulatory requirements – RBI Master Directions, ReBIT Technical Specifications – or market and other technical standards. The Participation Terms were accordingly designed with a change-management process, similar to how APIs evolve.
Since the rollout of Sahamati’s membership programme for all Regulated Entities eligible to participate in the AA Ecosystem on April 02, 2025, Sahamati shall not be accepting any further signatories to the Participation Terms.
Instead, we encourage you to become a member of Sahamati by signing the Sahamati Membership Terms, which offer a similar set of common, standardised set of contractual obligations for all participants. In addition, Members also get access to a wide range of technical and other common services offered by Sahamati to its members.
To know more about Sahamati’s Membership Program for Regulated Entities (REs), please click here.
