The introduction of comprehensive credit reporting in Australia, following changes to the Privacy Act in 2013, has attracted a number of overseas financial data analytics players to the local market, with the latest contender flagging its intentions on Friday.UK company Experian launched a consumer credit bureau in Australia in 2013 (it had been in the market offering data analytics and marketing services for 15 years) and US company FICO has raised its profile here over the past couple of years. This year Archer Capital took over the Australian and New Zealand business of Dun & Bradstreet.On Friday, financial data analytics and credit reporting company Veda announced that it had received a non-binding expression of interest from a US company Equifax, proposing to acquire Veda.Equifax runs a similar business to Veda and has operations or investments in 19 countries. It has made a cash offer for Veda, at A$2.70 a share, valuing the company at around $2.3 billion.Veda issued a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange, saying it would evaluate the expression of interest and update shareholders in due course.Equifax is making an opportunistic play, taking advantage of weakness in the Veda share price over the past couple of months. Veda's share price fell from a recent high of around $2.45 a share in early August to below $2 last week, reflecting the wider market decline as well as investors' concern that Veda has been making a substantial investment in comprehensive credit reporting without any clear timeline for a return on its investment.Last month Macquarie Securities downgraded Veda from Outperform to Neutral citing the likely delay in getting a return from CCR.Veda Group said it had more than 20 credit providers working with it on the development of comprehensive credit reporting platforms - either loading comprehensive data or in discussions to do so. The company said 4.5 million customer accounts had comprehensive data in them, representing about 15 per cent of accounts, with the proportion likely to be up to 30 per cent by the end of the year.Its expectation is that comprehensive data could be included in credit reports some time next year.After Veda informed the market of the Equifax approach on Friday its share price jumped more then 60 cents to close at $2.62.