Banks, lenders and other regulated entities that pull customer data through India’s Account Aggregator (AA) network will continue to do so free of charge for another month. Sahamati, the RBI-recognised self-regulatory organisation (SRO) for the AA ecosystem, has deferred the rollout of the network’s new standardised pricing model to December 1, 2026, from the earlier date of November 1.
In a circular dated October 26, Sahamati said the postponement was made “keeping in mind the upcoming festive season and requests for postponement”, and that implementation and operational details would follow in subsequent circulars.
Why the industry asked for more time
Moving an entire data-sharing network to a common commercial framework is not a simple switch. Participants had pointed out that the change requires legal reviews, fresh agreements among multiple institutions, and new systems to collect and distribute fees across the chain. With holiday schedules shrinking the working window, executives at firms using the network sought a short extension to complete these steps.
What the new economic model changes
The model, the outcome of nearly three years of industry consultation through Sahamati’s Economic Model Committee, gives the AA ecosystem a uniform pricing structure for the first time. Under it, Financial Information Users (FIUs), such as lenders, will pay a standard fee each time they successfully fetch a customer’s data.
That fee has three components: a digital public infrastructure (DPI) utility fee for the Account Aggregator, a fee for the Financial Information Provider (FIP), typically the bank holding the data, and an ecosystem management fee for Sahamati. The FIU settles all three through a single bill raised by the AA, which keeps its share and passes the rest on.
The shift is significant for data providers. Until now, banks acting as FIPs were not paid for sharing data, while fees paid by FIUs flowed largely to AAs and technology service providers (TSPs) that connected institutions to the network. Participants will now move to common pricing under a single standard contract, replacing the patchwork of bilateral deals, including those routed through intermediaries. Customers cannot be charged directly for sharing their data through the network, though AAs may still bill institutions separately for value-added services such as custom software tools.
Building a sustainable AA business
The pricing reset comes alongside the Reserve Bank of India’s push towards interoperability, under which a customer will be able to use any AA to reach a financial institution even without a direct integration between the two. Sahamati CEO B.G. Mahesh has noted that around 40-50 per cent of institutions currently work with only two or three AAs because each additional integration involves significant operational and legal effort.
Together, standard fees and interoperability are expected to bring clarity to an ecosystem that has scaled rapidly in volume but has struggled to build viable revenue models. AAs act as consent-based conduits that move financial data between institutions without being able to read or store it, and they have become central to faster credit decisions for individuals and MSMEs.
For lenders and fintechs, the one-month deferral offers extra time to finalise contracts and billing integrations. For banks, it marks the countdown to being paid for the data they hold. For the wider ecosystem, it is a key step towards making one of India’s flagship DPI rails commercially sustainable.
