UK Open Banking tech provider TrueLayer is establishing a presence in Australia, making it the first European specialist to do so.

Earlier this year, the company was selected by the UK’s Department of International Trade to pilot its FinTech bridge programme to Australia, alongside Smart Pensions.

The choice of Australia has also been in part motivated by the country’s new Consumer Data Right (CDR) law, which will come into full force in February 2020. The new legislation, which is similar to the UK’s Open Banking regulations, but wider in scope for data interoperability, enables consumers to access and safely transfer their financial data to trusted bodies via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

TrueLayer provides a wide range of clients with an interface to access their customers’ data from financial institutions, and will bring its API platform to Australia to help both local and multinational companies capitalise on the CDR regulations.

TrueLayer’s Australia and Pacific area operations will be overseen by Marie Steinthaler, who was previously head of new products at Zopa, where she oversaw its Open Banking strategy.

Steinthaler said: “TrueLayer is entering Australia at the perfect time - Open Banking is set to explode much in the same way it has in the UK.

“Our immediate focus will be to grow our team in Australia and help our multinational clients to expand their offering in the region, we have a lot of experience in working with the Open Banking roll-out in Europe, and will use these learnings to build out our platform in the run-up to CDR’s February launch.”

The move follows the company securing a $35 million funding round led by Tencent and Temasek in June.

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