Nandan Nilekani has renewed the case for widening India's Account Aggregator framework, arguing that the next phase of digital finance must reach street vendors, gig workers and other self-employed earners who still struggle to access formal credit. His remarks underscore a central challenge in India's financial inclusion story: the country has built powerful digital rails for payments and identity, but credit access for informal workers remains uneven and largely dependent on legacy underwriting methods.
Credit Beyond Salaried Borrowers
Nilekani's intervention is significant because it shifts the conversation from digital payments to digital credit. Account Aggregators were designed to allow individuals and businesses to securely share financial data with lenders, enabling consent-based underwriting based on bank statements, tax records and other verified information. In practice, however, the framework has been most visible among relatively formal borrowers and institutions already integrated into the digital financial ecosystem.
The gap is especially acute for street vendors, delivery workers, drivers, small traders and other self-employed earners whose incomes are real but irregular, fragmented or poorly documented. Traditional lenders often view such borrowers as high risk because they lack conventional salary slips, audited accounts or long credit histories. Nilekani's argument is that the Account Aggregator model can help bridge that divide by bringing together diverse data sources that better reflect actual cash flows and repayment capacity.
That approach could be particularly relevant in India's mobility and urban services economy, where millions of workers depend on platform-based or informal income streams. For these borrowers, access to small-ticket, timely credit can determine whether they can buy a vehicle, repair equipment, smooth seasonal income gaps or expand a micro-enterprise. In that sense, the issue is not only financial inclusion but also economic productivity.
Data For Smarter Lending
The broader promise of the Account Aggregator architecture lies in its ability to move lending away from blunt proxies and toward more nuanced risk assessment. By allowing consent-driven access to multiple financial data points, lenders can potentially evaluate borrowers who would otherwise be invisible to the formal system. That could include bank inflows, recurring digital receipts, utility payments, GST-linked activity and other indicators of business activity.
For lenders, this may reduce reliance on collateral-heavy models and open up new customer segments. For borrowers, it could mean faster approvals, lower dependence on informal moneylenders and more tailored loan products. But the model's success depends on trust, interoperability and scale. If data sources remain too narrow, or if the user experience is too complex, the framework risks becoming another promising but underused piece of digital infrastructure.
Nilekani also highlighted the need for a sustainable business model for Account Aggregators. That point is crucial. A consent-based data-sharing layer cannot rely indefinitely on policy enthusiasm alone; it needs viable economics for the entities that operate it, as well as incentives for lenders and data providers to participate. Without a durable commercial structure, the ecosystem may struggle to expand beyond early adopters.
Building Inclusive Finance
The policy implication is clear: India's digital public infrastructure is entering a more demanding phase, where inclusion will be judged not just by who can make payments, but by who can access affordable credit. Expanding Account Aggregators to serve informal workers could deepen the formal financial system's reach into the country's vast self-employed economy, which remains central to employment and consumption.
For the automotive and mobility sectors, the stakes are especially high. Many drivers, delivery workers and small fleet operators need financing for two-wheelers, three-wheelers and maintenance, yet often face barriers because their income patterns do not fit standard lending templates. A stronger Account Aggregator ecosystem could help lenders price risk more accurately and extend credit to borrowers who are currently excluded despite having viable repayment capacity.
The broader test will be execution. India has repeatedly shown that digital infrastructure can scale rapidly when it solves a real market failure. If Account Aggregators can be made useful for street vendors and gig workers, the framework could become a foundational layer for a more inclusive credit economy. Nilekani's message is that the opportunity is already visible; the task now is to make the system broad enough, trusted enough and commercially sound enough to serve it.