After a slow start, account aggregators take off

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Editor's note: The account aggregator system is gaining traction among bank customers three years after it was introduced. This comes at a time when the government scrapped an earlier draft of the data protection bill and introduced a new version last week. The account aggregator system is a financial data-sharing protocol built by the team behind the India Stack project led by Nandan Nilekani and Bengaluru-based think tank iSPIRT. The idea is to reduce friction in sharing documents and know your customer processes for financial services with the consent of customers. Let’s say you want to take a loan from Bank X. Rather than printing your bank statement from Bank Y or emailing it, the account aggregator system allows you to digitally transfer documents between the two banks. The same mechanism could be used by customers looking to buy a new insurance policy or open a trading account.  The account aggregator ecosystem, which includes standalone aggregator apps, financial institutions and technology service providers, has grown in terms of both participants and transaction volumes. In January this year, there were a little over …