Digital payments platform PhonePe on August 26 received in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an account aggregator (AA).

The Walmart-backed company said the licence will enable free and instant exchange of financial data between the Financial Information Users (FIUs) and Financial Information Providers (FIPs) with due consent from customers, in a safe and secure manner.

As stated by RBI, an account aggregator provides, under a contract, the service of retrieving or collecting information of its customer pertaining to financial assets, as may be specified by a bank from time to time. An AA’s business also involves consolidating, organising and presenting such information to the customer or any other person as per the instructions of the customer.

“The Account Aggregator licence will allow us to play a pivotal role in shaping the emergent Account Aggregator ecosystem for consent-based financial data sharing. Our AA technology stack will enable any Financial information user (FIU) to instantly retrieve financial information with customer consent from the Financial information provider (FIP),” Rahul Chari CTO and co-founder of PhonePe said.

PhonePe co-founder added that the firm is looking forward to working closely with all the industry stakeholders to take forward RBI’s vision of driving deeper financial inclusion across the country.

The development is a big milestone for the platform that has over 30 crore registered users and is accepted by over two crore merchant outlets across India.

After foraying into financial services in 2017 with the launch of ‘Gold’ providing users with a safe and convenient option to buy 24-karat gold securely on its platform, the company has launched several unique services. These include Mutual Funds and Insurance products like tax-saving funds, liquid funds, international travel insurance and Corona Care.

The startup also launched its Switch platform in 2018 enabling users to place orders on over 600 apps including Ola, Swiggy, Myntra, IRCTC, Goibibo, RedBus etc. directly from within the PhonePe mobile app.

(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)