Why this fintech deal reveals huge shifts in data sharing.

Fat Zebra, a payment processing company, has purchased Adatree, a fintech firm that develops technology for the Australian government’s Consumer Data Right (CDR). The acquisition is part of Fat Zebra’s bet that the CDR, a data-sharing framework, will eventually take off in Australia’s market. Despite being launched three and a half years ago, the CDR’s adoption has remained slow, with consumers largely unaware of their data-sharing rights. As part of the acquisition, Fat Zebra plans to integrate payments and CDR using Adatree’s platform. Adatree has already built a compliance dashboard that assesses the quality of data feeding into the CDR and serves as a customer to a major bank. The Australian government is also considering ending “screen scraping,” a process in which customers share their passwords, to regulate the sharing of banking data and push all data sharing into the CDR framework. Adatree CEO Jill Berry expressed optimism that the CDR will ultimately succeed and change the way payments and data are exchanged between businesses in the economy, including banks.