Accredited data recipient Adatree acquired by Fat Zebra

Australian payments infrastructure provider Fat Zebra has acquired Adatree, an accredited data recipient within the country’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) framework, to enhance its payments offering.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but the transaction completed in December 2023 and all employees of Adatree have joined Fat Zebra.

Fat Zebra processes payments for more than 30,000 SME and enterprise Australian merchants, with customers including PayPal, Macquarie Bank, Aussie Broadband and Zip, and handles in excess of 250 million ecommerce transactions annually in Australia.

With the acquisition of Adatree, Fat Zebra intends to integrate CDR-powered services alongside its existing payment solutions.

Pred Dragila, founder and chief executive officer of Fat Zebra, called Open Data and Open Payments “the future” of the financial landscape.

“This acquisition positions Fat Zebra to drive smarter, data-driven payments in Australia, offering enhanced services to our clients and partners,” he added.

Founded in 2019, Adatree enables companies to access regulated and consented data sharing for the creation of use cases, including loan assessment reporting, energy and banking comparison, real-time broker portfolio tracking, personal financial management, and recommendation engines.

Adatree is connected to 114 data sources, covering 99.73% of Australia’s household banking market share.

“We are thrilled about this opportunity and what it means for our team, company, and product roadmap,” said Jill Berry, chief executive officer of Adatree.

“Joining forces with Fat Zebra allows us to accelerate our mission of advancing Open Banking and data-driven solutions.

“This will enable the development of features to make payments smarter, showing immediate synergies and benefits with the companies joining.”

In October last year, Open Banking provider Frollo released its State of Open Banking report, in which it revealed that the number of businesses registered to use Open Banking data has nearly doubled in Australia over the past 12 months, from 77 to 142.

Banks and Open Banking providers make up almost half of the Accredited Data Recipients in the country, with 10 apiece, followed by payments and lending businesses.

Open Energy went live in Australia in November 2023, with 20 Australian energy companies.