UK open banking company TrueLayer is closing its Australian business, a little over 12 months after it launched here.
The move to shut up shop has been driven by problems in the parent company operation, which announced cost cuts last month, and by the slow progress in the development of the Consumer Data Right locally.
Banking Day contacted TrueLayer Australia chief executive Brenton Charnley, who directed us to the company’s London office.
A spokesperson said: "TrueLayer has paused its activity in Australia. This decision reflects a number of factors, including the maturity of the open banking market in Australia and the Consumer Data Right, as well as global macroeconomic headwinds. As a business, we've made the decision to double down on opportunities elsewhere, including in Europe.
"We remain committed to the success of open banking in the region. For this reason, TrueLayer will be maintaining our Australian corporate entity, statutory accreditation and industry membership."
TrueLayer claims that more than half the open banking traffic in the UK, Ireland and Spain is processed through its data and payments APIs. Last year, the business was valued at more than US$1 billion when it raised capital.
But last month the company cited “challenging conditions” when it said it would lay off 10 per cent of its staff. UK media reports said the problems were more on the crypto services side of the business.
In the year it has operated in Australia, TrueLayer has formed relationships with a number of partners, including Douugh, payments company Monoova and data software company MogoPlus. It has been working on a variety of data sharing and payments projects.
But CDR and open banking are having a slow and trouble-plagued build in Australia. Earlier this month, the Statutory Review of the Consumer Data Right reported that poor data quality is holding back take-up.
The submission of the Financial Data and Technology Association said many of its members regularly shared concerns about poor quality CDR data, delays in data being received and “missing fields, erroneous data fields, garbled and inconsistent data”.
The review said: “It will take a concerted effort by all participants in the CDR ecosystem to work collectively to resolve data quality issues as they arise.”
TrueLayer senior staff are already on the move. This week, rival CDR company Biza.io announced that it hired Rob Hale as its chief technology officer. Hale led the introduction of open banking at Regional Australia Bank, where he was chief data officer, and then joined TrueLayer as head of banking last November.