What will sharing data through an Account Aggregator look like?

By Lakshmi Ajayan and Dharmesh Ba

There is a lot of fanfare around the novel concept of Account Aggregators (AA). But what will it look like? How will the customer share financial information with a Financial Information User (FIU) from an AA? We think that the easiest way to imagine this is by drawing parallels with the UX of UPI payment.

Instead of transitioning between Swiggy and Google Pay for sending money, you are now transitioning between a digital lender app and an AA app for sharing your financial documents/data.

We have created a fictional example of what this interaction could look like for a use case in digital lending:

Digital Lending Example

DigiCredit (fictional) is a mobile app that allows you to borrow unsecured loan upon furnishing your financial accounts like bank statements and insurance. After signing up with the app and choosing the loan amount that you need, you are requested to share your bank account statements and insurance details with DigiCredit. The financial information is used to understand the creditworthiness of the potential borrower.

• DigiCredit’s app offers various means of sharing the required data:

1. You can either share the bank account statements and life insurance policies through an Account Aggregator

or

2. Upload PDFs of the bank account statements and life insurance policies

• Once the AA option is selected, you are asked to either select your preferred AA app or to enter your AA ID (similar to UPI ID).
• When your preferred AA app is selected, a request is sent to them for obtaining your consent. When you open your AA app, you will see the consent request from DigiCredit:

• Opening the consent request from DigiCredit will show clearly, the type and specifics of your personal data that they are requesting for. It will also show how long DigiCredit is asking for access to your information:

• If you have previously linked the preferred bank account and insurance details (Financial Information Providers) with the AA app, then all you have to do is to go ahead and authorise consent:

1. You can select your preferred bank account and insurance policy from among the accounts that are already linked to your AA app.
2. Once the preferred accounts are selected, the AA app offers various ways to authorise your consent including your AA PIN (similar to UPI PIN)/phone unlock pattern/OTP authorisation.

The AA Pin is a 4-digit PIN number that is set during the onboarding of your AA app.

• If you are receiving a request for this type of data for the first time, it is unlikely that you have previously linked your bank/insurance accounts to your AA app. In this case, you would have to link your preferred bank account and insurance policy before authorising your consent:

1. To link a bank account, you can choose your banking institution out of a list of institutions provided.
2. When your bank is selected, the AA app asks to do an OTP verification. This helps the AA app find the accounts linked with your phone number within the selected bank.
3. If you have multiple accounts within the selected bank, you will be able to choose your preferred account(s) to link with your AA app.

Please note that you are allowed to link any number of accounts to your AA app as may be needed.

• Once the consent has been successfully authorised, DigiCredit is now able to assess your data and lets you know whether you are eligible for the applied loan.

And that’s how easy and simple AAs can make the data sharing process. Similarly, you will not just be able to give your consent for sharing data but also track previous consents and revoke them if required on the AA app.

Future of Data Sharing:

‘Future of Data Sharing’ aims at designing a playbook for consented sharing to enable financial services in India. The objective of this research is to develop a design toolkit with the upcoming public infrastructure Account Aggregators as the main theme in focus. The toolkit will host resources and assets around designing better user experiences for data sharing and data portability.

Future of Data Sharing is sponsored by Facebook and executed in collaboration with D91 Labs, DICE, Parallel Labs and TTC Labs.

Future of Data Sharing by D91 Labs is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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About D91 Labs

This research was executed and documented by D91 labs. D91 labs is an open-source initiative by setu.co to help Bharat build great fintech products. We organize and publish user research, insights, and frameworks for fintech in India. Please follow us on medium for more exciting stories and insights on Bharat.

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