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Sydney-based payments infrastructure provider Fat Zebra has bolstered its position in the smart payments sector through the acquisition of Adatree, an Australian open banking technology platform that has made its mark as a trailblazer in the sector.
While financial details of the acquisition remain under wraps, Fat Zebra says it will harness the strengths of both organisations ‘to create innovative solutions in the evolving financial landscape’.
Fat Zebra, which was founded in 2012 and is backed by NASDAQ-listed financial services technology giant Fiserv, processes payments for more than 30,000 enterprises and says the push into open data and payment services sets the company up to accommodate the future of financial transactions.
The company also handles about 250 million annual e-commerce transactions in Australia, making it a major player in the domestic payments industry.
“This acquisition positions Fat Zebra to drive smarter, data-driven payments in Australia, offering enhanced services to our clients and partners," says Fat Zebra founder and CEO Pred Dragila.
“Entering into the world of open banking signifies an important step for the future of Fat Zebra, aiming to seamlessly integrate Consumer Data Right-powered services alongside its payment solutions.
“This move will give businesses a more robust future-thinking solution, providing greater insights into their payments and customers.”
Consumer Data Right (CDR) is the regulatory and standards framework for consumer data portability in Australia, giving people the right to share their data between service providers.
Adatree, a Sydney-based fintech founded in 2019 by Jill Berry, Shane Doolan and Jason Lamble, operates a CDR intermediary platform that is used by the likes of comparison website iSelect, BankVic and mortgage broking platform Sherlock.
Accredited as a data recipient by the ACCC, Adatree enables companies to access regulated and consented data-sharing covering a range of uses including loan assessment reporting, energy and banking comparison, real-time broker portfolio tracking and personal financial management.
Adatree is connected to 114 banking data sources, which covers 99.73 per cent of the household banking market share and 20 energy companies.
Berry, the Adatree CEO, says the acquisition by Fat Zebra opens up new opportunities for its team, business and its ‘product roadmap’.
“Joining forces with Fat Zebra allows us to accelerate our mission of advancing open banking and data-driven solutions,” says Berry.
“This will enable the development of features to make payments smarter, showing immediate synergies and benefits with the companies joining."
Adatree, which launched the world’s first open data marketplace the Adatree Exchange in 2022, is the only regulated data intermediary to introduce ‘open energy’ to its data platform. The platform went live with Australian energy companies in November last year.
Adatree says all of its team members will transition across to Fat Zebra as part of the acquisition.
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