RBI Just Made Account Aggregators Interchangeable. The Filings Say That's A Problem For The "AA Trade"

On 7 October 2026, alongside the MPC decision, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra announced two plumbing reforms that got far less airtime than the 25 bps repo hike. Account aggregators (AAs) will become interoperable by December 2026 — you'll be able to use any AA to share your financial data, not just the one your bank picked. And depositories may now fold bank deposits into the Consolidated Account Statement (CAS), putting FDs, stocks and mutual funds on one statement.

The market read this as a win for AA licence holders: Pine Labs and CAMS rose up to 4.5%. But read what these companies actually tell the exchanges, and the trade looks backwards. Interoperability is not a moat — it removes one. And the fee attached to CAS is tiny.

CAMS: the share is already going backwards

CAMS runs one of the first RBI-licensed AAs. Per its FY25 annual report, CAMS Financial Information Services Private Limited "has been issued with the Certificate of Registration by the Reserve Bank of India as a Non-Banking Financial Company" to act as an account aggregator — the business it markets as CAMSfinserv.

Here is CAMS' own market-share disclosure, straight from its quarterly investor presentations. Its share of customer accounts linked to the AA ecosystem was 9.5% in Q2 FY24, 13.3% by Q3 FY24, and the company reported it "grew 35% this year to increase from 8.6% (FY24) to 11.6% (FY25)." Then, in the presentation filed 22 January 2026, the number is 9% — alongside 363 enterprises onboarded and 90+ FIPs integrated.

Read that carefully. CAMS is winning more clients (283 total signups in the FY25 deck, 363 enterprises now) while its share of actual data flow has slipped back to roughly where it was two years ago. The AA market is growing faster than CAMS is — and interoperability accelerates that, because the differentiator collapses to price and latency.

On materiality: CAMS disclosed (September 2024 presentation) that non-MF revenue was just 13% of revenue in FY24, up from 10% in FY23 — and AA is one of roughly six businesses inside that 13%, alongside CAMSKRA, CAMSPay, CAMSRep, NPS CRA and alternatives. Even the 111% FY25 AA revenue growth CAMS reported is growth on a sliver.

CDSL: the CAS fee meter is about ₹9 crore a quarter

The deposit-into-CAS change routes through the depositories, which generate the statement. How much does CDSL earn from it? On the 6 May 2024 earnings call, CFO Girish Amesara answered directly: "ECAS income for the quarter is INR9.37 crores." On the January 2025 call he confirmed where it sits — "other income consists of eCAS statement charges, eVoting charges, investment income, eSign and other KRA related income."

Put that against the segment table in CDSL's 1 August 2026 filing: total income of ₹292.76 crore in Q1 FY27 and ₹1,144.92 crore in FY26, of which Depository Activity alone was ₹960.45 crore. eCAS is a low-single-digit percentage line. Adding a bank-deposit row to a statement CDSL already mails does not change that arithmetic much. The value here is stickiness and data, not a fee windfall.

KFintech: owns a quarter of the leader, never pulled the trigger

The most telling disclosure belongs to KFintech. On 22 March 2023 it "acquired 25.63% stake in Fintech Products and Solutions India Private Limited (FPSIPL)... by investing INR 65.00 million" — ₹6.5 crore for a chunk of OneMoney, which its own presentation called "India's First Account Aggregator, Licensed by RBI... Leading player with over 40% market share" (an FY23 figure). KFintech also disclosed "an option to acquire additional equity, taking its aggregate shareholding in FPSIPL to 75.01 percent."

It never exercised it. FPSIPL is still listed as an Associate in KFintech's January 2025 quarterly results. Management was candid about why on the October 2023 call: their interest was "in driving TSP solutions, not so much of just pure account aggregation data movement itself." The company closest to the AA market leader decided the data-movement layer wasn't worth controlling.

Pine Labs is the one that actually committed

Pine Labs did the opposite, and almost nobody noticed. Per its 25 May 2026 filing, it increased its holding in Agya — "a company incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013 to pursue the business of Non-Banking Financial Company – Account Aggregator (NBFC-AA)" — "from 25.40% to 100%," with Agya becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary "consolidated from the acquisition date of 21 February 2026."

Crucially, Pine Labs tells you where the money is. Its December 2025 presentation describes the AA business as "Expanding through new products (like Switchboard Orchestrator) and entering new segments (pivoting to Lenders)," grouping AA inside a platform showing "38%+ growth in transactions YoY" across Bharat Connect (BBPS), UPI switch and AA. AA revenue comes from lending underwriting — not retail wealth statements.

The layer that doesn't get commoditised

Interoperability commoditises the AA. What it cannot commoditise is being the Financial Information Provider that holds exclusive data — CAMS and KFintech as mutual fund registrars, CDSL Ventures as a KRA, and Protean eGov, whose filings confirm Protean Account Aggregator Limited as a wholly-owned subsidiary but whose real asset is NPS and APY with "leading market share of more than 97%" and "8.2cr+ pension subscribers," plus 64% cumulative PAN share. Protean reported FY26 revenue from operations of ₹997.75 crore.

What retail investors should do

Do not buy a stock because it holds an AA licence — after December 2026 that licence is a commodity, and CAMS' own slides show what happens to share when the pipe is fungible. Look at who holds the data rather than who moves it, and size positions off disclosed revenue rather than headlines: a ~₹9 crore quarterly eCAS line at CDSL and an AA business buried inside 13% of CAMS' revenue will not move either company's FY27 earnings. Watch two disclosures next quarter — whether CAMS' linked-accounts share recovers above 11.6%, and whether Pine Labs breaks out Agya's contribution now that it consolidates it. Those will tell you whether the AA layer is becoming a business or staying a utility.

Data sourced from company filings on NSE via Xaro.