Nandan Nilekani has renewed the case for widening India's Account Aggregator framework, arguing that the country's digital credit rails must evolve to serve self-employed workers, gig workers and street vendors who remain outside the reach of conventional lending. His remarks come at a time when India is pushing deeper financial formalisation, but still faces a persistent gap between digital access and actual access to credit.
Credit Beyond Salaries
Nilekani's core argument is that the current lending architecture remains too dependent on traditional income documentation, which disadvantages workers whose earnings are irregular, cash-heavy or spread across multiple sources. For a street vendor, delivery worker or small trader, the absence of a formal salary slip does not mean the absence of repayment capacity. It often means the financial system has not yet learned how to read their economic lives.
The Account Aggregator framework was designed to solve precisely this problem by allowing individuals to share financial data from multiple institutions, with consent, so lenders can make more informed decisions. In theory, it can combine bank statements, tax records, insurance data and other financial signals into a more complete picture of a borrower. Nilekani's intervention suggests that the next phase of the system should be to make that promise real for the informal economy, not just for digitally active salaried consumers.
That shift matters for the automotive, EV and mobility ecosystem as well. India's mobility transition is increasingly shaped by small operators: two-wheeler riders, fleet drivers, last-mile delivery workers and micro-entrepreneurs who need financing for vehicles, batteries, repairs and working capital. If the credit system can better evaluate these borrowers, it could accelerate vehicle ownership, fleet expansion and adoption of electric mobility at the bottom of the market.
Data For Informal Borrowers
The challenge is not simply one of technology. It is also about data diversity, lender confidence and product design. Informal workers often generate fragmented financial footprints across bank accounts, UPI transactions, digital wallets, utility payments, GST filings and platform earnings. A robust Account Aggregator ecosystem could bring these signals together, but only if lenders are willing to build underwriting models that recognise non-traditional income patterns.
Nilekani's emphasis on incorporating diverse financial information sources points to a broader policy question: how to make India's digital public infrastructure inclusive without making it intrusive. Consent-based data sharing is central to the Account Aggregator model, and that principle becomes even more important when the target users are vulnerable workers and small vendors who may not have the bargaining power to navigate opaque financial products.
For street vendors in particular, access to formal credit can be transformative. It can reduce dependence on informal lenders, smooth seasonal income shocks and help finance inventory, carts, storage equipment or mobility assets. For gig workers, it can support vehicle purchases and maintenance, which are often prerequisites for earning capacity. In both cases, the issue is not charity but credit assessment: the system must learn to recognise cash flow where it exists, even if it does not arrive in a conventional form.
Sustainable AA Business Model
Nilekani also underscored the need for a sustainable business model for Account Aggregators themselves. That is a crucial point, because infrastructure that is meant to scale nationally cannot depend indefinitely on policy enthusiasm alone. If the ecosystem is to serve millions of borrowers, it must be commercially viable for data providers, lenders and technology intermediaries while remaining affordable for end users.
A sustainable model will likely depend on transaction volumes, lender adoption and clear value creation for all participants. If Account Aggregators become a routine part of loan origination, they could lower acquisition costs, improve approval accuracy and reduce default risk. But if the system remains limited to a narrow set of use cases, it risks becoming another underused layer in India's otherwise ambitious digital stack.
The broader significance of Nilekani's comments lies in the direction they point: a financial system that does not merely digitise existing exclusions, but actively redesigns credit access for the informal economy. In a country where millions earn outside formal payroll structures, the next frontier of financial inclusion may depend less on opening bank accounts and more on proving that the data already exists to lend responsibly. Expanding Account Aggregators to street vendors and other self-employed workers could be one of the most practical steps toward that goal.