DEPA and Account Aggregators: The Future of Personal Data Sharing

By




Aaryaman Vir is an entrepreneur and a Venture Capitalist (VC). He is the co-founder of Elemential Labs, a blockchain startup, and a micro-VC firm Prophetic Ventures. He is also volunteering with the iSPIRT Foundation to create the Account Aggregator (AA) framework which has the potential to transform the way we share data by giving us more control through the Data Protection and Empowerment Architecture (DEPA). The iSPIRT Foundation is the force behind the success of breakthrough innovations in India like Aadhaar and the UPI. It is also leading the country towards a more secure digital world by advocating for the Personal Data Protection Bill. 00:00

1:02 Becoming A Part Of India’s Tech Story: Aaryaman starts out by talking about his journey as an entrepreneur and his desire to be a part of India’s tech story. After completing his graduation from the US, he returns to India and joins a startup called Haptik. Falling in love with technology, he ventures out to start Elemential Labs, which was one of the first startups in the blockchain technology space. However, his thirst for knowledge and learning drives him to start a micro-VC firm Prophetic Ventures.

4:56 The iSPIRT Foundation: The iSPIRT Foundation has been involved in projects like Aadhar and UPIs. Being aware of iSPIRT’s role in the Indian fintech landscape, Aaryaman met the volunteers of the foundation with regards to learning about their work and looking for ways to collaborate with them. It was during this meeting that he first learnt about the new Account Aggregator framework. He could immediately see the potential of this framework and wanted to learn more about it. By digging deep into the topic, he wrote a blog post describing the vast potential of this framework in terms of data sharing and data privacy for the users.
7:22 Financial Inclusion - Aadhar, UPI and AAs: Solving the problem of financial inclusion in India, first the Aadhar was introduced to help Indians get bank accounts, then the UPI was launched to help them access financial services through digital payments to make them a part of the digital economy. AAs are a part of the bigger plan to help these users to access loans at nominal rates from institutional lenders like NBFCs and Banks. The AA framework is designed to help users to share their data in a completely secure manner.

11:27 What Is DEPA?: DEPA is designed to accommodate the AAs which will remove all the security hazards and considerably ease the lending process for the banks and NBFCs. This will also help the borrowers who do not have collateral or a credit score to access loans from banks by enabling the banks to securely access their credit history and their creditworthiness.

14:56 The Personal Data Protection Bill: India a leading the way for personal data privacy by introducing the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 that will empower the individual by providing rights like right to confirmation and access, right to correction and erase, right to data portability and right to be forgotten. These rights will be crucial in the digital economy where data is the new currency. RBI is already working in the direction by working with organizations like iSPIRT to provide the right to data portability through the AA framework.

20:20 What Is An Account Aggregator: The Account Aggregator framework will be a lot similar to the UPI framework wherein users make digital payments by connecting their bank account to their UPI ID and then using that ID to make payments on different platforms. In the same way, the entities (Account Aggregators) that will be approved by the RBI will be able to connect different bank accounts using a single ID which can be used by users to share their financial data securely to other banks and NBFCs. The best thing about this framework is that the users can choose the data they want to share and the period of time they want their data to be used, giving them more control over their personal data and privacy.

25:57 How Will Banks React To AAs?: Account Aggregators like the UPI players in the country will offer benefits for banks and provide them with access to more customers and data. This, in turn, will help them to create more customized products and services.