On 25 July, a non-governmental private company -Sahamati was launched in Mumbai. The Nandan Nilekani-backed company is a collective of the Account Aggregator ecosystem that helps small business and individuals share their financial data digitally in a safe and secure manner while allowing them have control over how their data is being used.

"The financial sector will be the first area where this will be deployed, while the approach can be later applied to telecom, healthcare, and other sectors," the company said in a press release.

Sahamati is claimed to have in-principle approval from the RBI to roll out. After the major financial regulators like RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA came together to allow regulated entities under their control to share data with user consent, the work around Account Aggregators began, it said.

"This is expected to revolutionise lending, wealth management, financial planning and other areas in the next few years, as individuals start to control the flow of their data held currently in silos across various financial institutions."

"For example, a user seeking a loan will be able to quickly share their bank statements and other details required by lending institutions digitally through their choice of preferred AA. Users seeking financial planning services will be able to share their mutual fund, insurance, provident fund and banking details digitally through their AA app," Sahamati's press release explains.

Over concerns of data privacy, Sahamati claims that the data that will flow between the Financial Information Providers and the Financial Information Users will be fully encrypted. "Even the AA will not be able to see the data it helps to move," it said, "thus ensuring secure sharing of data."

"The AA will also enable users to revoke consent to share data, and also enable individuals to share individual items of data without sharing a full history. This is almost impossible to do when full bank statements, mutual fund statements etc are shared in paper form or downloaded and sent to service providers," it added.