Mumbai, October 30: In his keynote address at the SamvAAd: India Open Finance Summit 2026 in Mumbai, Infosys Co-Founder Nandan Nilekani has outlined his next project, to deepen financial inclusion and drive digital empowerment after championing Aadhaar and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) projects. Nilekani emphasized the scaling of consent-based frameworks as he looks to take India’s public infrastructure to new heights.
At the summit, the discussions revolved around transitioning from basic financial access to complete financial well being and open finance. Nilekani is aiming to expand the Account Aggregator (AA) framework, a consent-based data-sharing system aimed at giving individuals and small businesses secure control over their financial records.
At the event, the proposals mooted were aimed at scaling the Account Aggregator Network to reach 500 million individuals, streamlining credit underwriting for informal micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), gig workers, and industrial blue-collar workers without compromising personal privacy.
Speaking at the summit, Nandan Nilekani stressed how India’s financial sector relices on institutionalising trust, interoperability and consumer data ownership:
“The next chapter of India’s open finance journey moves beyond network scale and adoption towards measurable impact, greater financial inclusion, intelligent innovation and stronger consumer empowerment through trusted, consent-based data sharing.”
While Aadhaar and UPI have successfully solved identity verification and instant payments across the world’s largest population, the current push into open finance addresses persistent challenges in accessing credit. The next AA initiative championed by Mr Nilekani is aimed at reducing systemic risk and securing cash flow and tax data with lenders via certified intermediaries, allowing millions of unbanked people to access credit.
