We have been used to paying directly via multiple online platforms and apps for years. The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has managed to connect banks across the board to create the most seamless transactions.
However, the scenario is still not that simple and easy when we consider taking loans from banks, NBFCs and microfinance players. More so, if the borrower is self-employed, freelancer, new to credit with no previous track record, a small business owner, a farmer etc.
The endless scrambling for documents and proofs, for certified copies along with originals, makes borrowing quite a task for those in the above categories or in the informal sector who otherwise have the potential to access and repay loans.
Even when workers in the formal sector take loans, there are cases where the paperwork is onerous.
To solve this problem, a new unified credit interface (ULI) was devised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) late last year through the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub. It is still in the pilot phase, but is getting off the ground well.
Although it is not a platform that a borrower can directly access, the ULI has significant advantages from an efficiency and time saving perspective in sanctioning loans by banks and other lenders.
At its core, the ULI will be able to give lenders electronic access to multiple financial and non-financial data points of borrowers in a fraction of the time it actually takes to physically acquire, verify and authenticate them.
As of April this year, the ULI has reportedly facilitated 1.4 million loans worth ₹65,000 crore. The loan amount stood at ₹27,000 crore as of December 2024. It is clear that there is robust traction for access to digital infrastructure.
We’ll dive into the details of the ULI and how it differs in features from account aggregators (AAs) – also data providers – and how borrowers can benefit from the platform.
Collecting smart data
In a sense, the ULI is a data marketplace for lenders. It connects data providers (multiple institutions) with data users (lenders) in an integrated manner.
The ULI can manage the entire life cycle of a borrower’s loan, from identity verification, loan eligibility, application to disbursement.
It offers more than 100 services and is currently connected to 56 lenders.
As previously mentioned, ULI’s digital infrastructure can provide financial and non-financial data to lenders.
There are 15 different categories of services available. An example of this can be found below.
State Land Registration System: Land ownership data, master data with district ID, survey number per pin, lien marking, display of record of rights (RoR) and the like. Currently, data from nine states are available. But considering that as many as fifteen states/Union Territories have digitized most of their country data, data from many more places in India could become available.
Authentication and verification services: PAN verification, bank account validation, e-KYC, car registration verification, ITR and 26 AS analyzer, bank statement analyzer, Aadhaar redact, UAN (universal account number) for employment, voter ID verification and many more such services.
Property search services: City charges audit, MCA (Ministry of Corporate Affairs) ROC (Registrar of Companies) report, real estate survey report, legal due diligence records, ownership audit, asset based search with CERSAI and the like.
GSTN details: GSTN number and type of taxpayer, GSTR-1 and GSTR-3b details.
Digital document execution: e-stamp, e-sign etc.
The ULI also connects lenders with account aggregators. Now these AAs typically only provide financial information related to borrowers and have been around for several years. There are several AAs that provide data to lenders based on consent.
On the other hand, ULI pulls data from various other sources and also from non-financial data as mentioned earlier. There is only one ULI and it works for all data sources and data users based on a consent mechanism. It therefore has a much broader scope. AAs are part of the ULI ecosystem.
In addition to the above, ULI can provide other services. These include data points from satellite services, farm irrigation reports, business and MSME verification, legal, fraud and risk compliance, ID/document verification and so on.
How borrowers benefit
Take the example of a home loan. When a borrower applies for a loan from a bank, the lender insists on various documents.
Salary slips, income tax returns, employment letters, Aadhaar, PAN, other identities like passport/voter ID etc., bank statements, allotment letter from builder, buyer’s agreement, title deeds of the property for the entire chain of ownership, encumbrance certificates, legal advice etc. are requested by the bank.
If you are self-employed or a small business owner, in addition to many of the documents previously mentioned, you may also be asked for GST details, company registration details, asset ownership details, etc.
Once you submit all of these, the lender will typically take a few days to a few weeks to approve or reject the loan based on the applicant’s profile.
Since almost all the necessary documents are available online, the ULI can even expedite the loan decision to the same day or a few days.
In addition to faster processing and efficiency with very limited physical movement of documents, there are a number of other benefits.
For those without a credit score or borrowing record, it can be difficult to access credit. With the ULI, lenders will have access to a very large number of additional data points to assess the creditworthiness of such borrowers, apart from conventional borrowers.
So some lenders may be willing to make loans to borrowers who may be rejected by others due to strict criteria. A broader group of borrowers would therefore have access to credit.
You can also ‘shop around’ for loans if your financial strength is stronger, as some lenders may be willing to offer better rates.
All borrowers have to do is consent to the retrieval of all data at the time of the loan application. The lender that has joined the ULI receives all data.
If all data is available online, processing costs are dramatically reduced.
The ULI claims to reduce processing costs for lenders by 60 percent and shorten loan processing time from weeks to minutes.
Please note: borrowers cannot log in to the ULI themselves, as the digital infrastructure is only accessible to lenders.
Finally, borrowers may fear data security when giving consent.
But the ULI clearly specifies that the entire data retrieval process is consent-based. No PII (personally identifiable information) is stored in the digital infrastructure, data is encrypted end-to-end, there are full audit trails for regulatory compliance and consent management is strict.
Published on November 1, 2025
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