The Goods and Services Tax network (GSTN) has been included to the account aggregator (AA) network as a financial information provider (FIP) to facilitate cash flow lending to the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
- Department of revenue shall be the regulator of GSTN for this specific purpose and GST returns, viz. Form GSTR-1 and Form GSTR-3B, shall be the financial information, the RBI said.
What is an Account Aggregator?
- An Account Aggregator (AA) is a type of RBI regulated entity (with an NBFC-AA license) that helps an individual securely and digitally access and share information from one financial institution they have an account with to any other regulated financial institution in the AA network.
- The list of financial information providers includes banks, non-banking financial companies, asset management companies, depository, depository participants, insurance companies, and pension funds.
- Data cannot be shared without the consent of the individual.
- There will be many Account Aggregators an individual can choose between.
- The Account Aggregator network allows sharing of transaction data or bank statements from savings/deposit/current accounts.
- Account Aggregators cannot see the data; they merely take it from one financial institution to another based on an individual’s direction and consent.
- The data AAs share is encrypted by the sender and can be decrypted only by the recipient.
- The end to end encryption and use of technology like the ‘digital signature’ makes the process much more secure than sharing paper documents.
