The Foundation Of The Fintech Decade: Account Aggregators & Open Banking

Hey everybody! It has been a long time since my last blog post on Medium, but I want to share an update with all of you.

After my previous post about DEPA, I was approached by iSPIRT to join them as a volunteer! So for the past few months I have been helping them in their quest to build world class digital public infrastructure for India.

As somebody who has always admired their work, it is a real honour to work alongside them. The principles, talent, and ambition of the organisation really are something else, and my admiration has only increased since I joined.

As part of iSPIRT, I have been putting out a few blog posts on different pieces of public infrastructure such as the National Health Stack (NHS) and the Loan Service Provider (LSP), and I have generally tried to spread awareness of DEPA and Account Aggregators to entrepreneurs and investors alike.

I have not really had time to put out new articles on my personal blog — until now. I am delighted to share with you a four part blog series I wrote with Lars Markull. Lars is a true fintech expert: he has worked in fintech for a long time and has a great understanding of the field.

I actually met Lars after my original article about DEPA: he reached out to me after reading my piece and we have stayed in touch since then! Over the course of our conversations, Lars and I agreed that something really important was happening in the world of fintech, and that it was worth shining a light on this exciting new phenomenon. That is why we are putting our learnings down in this blog.

In our four part blog series, Lars and I talk about the following:

• What is open banking, and why do we need it?
• How did open banking come about?
• In which countries is it being put into effect, and with what kind of results?
• What are some use cases and business opportunities stemming from open banking?

Because publishing the same content on two different pages can sometimes lead to poor SEO, we decide to just publish the series on Lars’ blog. We have already released the first part of the series, go check it out! We hope that you enjoy the series and that you learn something new!

LASTLY: While I have your attention, Sahamati is hosting a hackathon in order to drive awareness and education of the new Account Aggregator system in India. During this 4-week long virtual (online) hackathon, which will start on July 4th and end on August 2nd, there will be lots of great workshops, masterclasses, and webinars about Account Aggregators.

A sneak peek at some of the great content we have:

• Keynote address by Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Infosys
• Masterclass on Personal Finance Management by Amit Bhor, Co-Founder of Walnut (India’s most popular personal finance app)
• Masterclass on the legalities of the Account Aggregator framework by Matthew Chacko, Spice Route Legal
• Masterclass on designing informed consent journeys by Dharmesh BA, Design Lead of D91 Labs and Setu
• Panel of judges including Amit Jain (MD, Sequoia Capital), Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED), and Sashank Rishyasringa (Co-Founder, Capital Float)

There will also be deep dives by all the Account Aggregator companies, who will each showcase their APIs and give access to their development sandboxes.

For developers and entrepreneurs, there is no better way to get hands on with this new technology and learn about the huge opportunities of the AA system. This is especially relevant since the AA system will go live with the first few large private Indian banks in the next two months.

Registrations for the hackathon end on July 1st, and developers and entrepreneurs should definitely sign up or share it with their friends. Even if you don’t code, do not worry. You can still attend the virtual events and watch the recorded sessions — just follow Sahamati on Twitter and Youtube to stay up to date.