The Account Aggregator framework should be expanded to include street vendors, gig workers and other self-employed people who lack significant assets but need regular access to formal credit, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said at the Samv AAd 2026-India Open Finance Summit on Thursday.
Nilekani said the framework should move beyond its current focus on salaried individuals and help small informal businesses obtain credit for everyday operating needs. He cited street vendors who require regular funds to purchase supplies as an example of borrowers who could benefit from a broader digital financial system.
“We have to go beyond salaried because salaried is one part of our ecosystem. We want that lady on the street who is selling vegetables to get daily credit to buy supplies. That’s our dream of what AA should do,” Nilekani said.
The Account Aggregator system allows individuals and businesses to share financial information digitally with regulated financial institutions, subject to their consent. Account Aggregators are non-banking financial companies that retrieve or collect customers’ financial information for this purpose. Information cannot be retrieved, shared or transferred through the framework without customer approval.
Nilekani said lenders could assess the creditworthiness of self-employed borrowers by using a wider range of financial information rather than relying mainly on ownership of assets. He said the system could support cash-flow-based lending for small businesses and individuals whose economic activity may not be reflected in conventional collateral-based assessments.
“Historically, lending in India was based on what assets you own. But a person does not own any assets. How do they get access to credit? They get access to credit by monetising the data streams and that’s what we do here,” he said.
For small businesses, Nilekani identified Goods and Services Tax data, income-tax returns and current-account information as potential inputs for assessing cash flows. “If you have GST data, income tax return plus current account, that is the basis for cash flow lending for small business and self-employed,” he said.
He also called for widening the range of information that can be accessed through the Account Aggregator framework. Possible additions mentioned at the summit included income-tax returns, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation records, small-savings schemes, FASTag data and utility bill payments.
The proposed expansion would connect formal lenders with financial activity that is currently spread across multiple systems. For urban workers and small businesses, that activity can include digital payments, transport-related transactions, utility payments and tax records. However, the framework’s consent requirement means that any such data would have to be shared by customers through the regulated system.
Nilekani also said the Account Aggregator ecosystem needs a sustainable business model. He argued that Account Aggregators should be able to earn fees and that data providers may also need compensation for their role. “The Account Aggregators themselves have to make some fee income. You can’t completely rely on a free system,” he said.
The comments place the expansion of formal credit alongside the next stage of India’s digital financial infrastructure: using consent-based data sharing to serve borrowers who may not have conventional assets or salaried employment. The summit’s proposals would require further implementation decisions on eligible data sources, lender participation, customer consent and the fee structure for the ecosystem.
