Just six months after receiving approval to offer Consumer Data Right services, specialist payments ADI Cuscal has moved to fast-track its involvement in the open banking and open data markets with the acquisition of CDR fintech Basiq. Cuscal announced on Friday that it has entered into a binding agreement to acquire a material controlling interest in Braavo Corporation Pty Ltd, Basiq’s parent company.  Westpac’s Reinventure, NAB Ventures and Visa are among the sellers. Cuscal was granted accreditation to participate in the Consumer Data Right in September last year. It is accredited as an unrestricted data recipient. At the time, Jamie Leach, Cuscal’s domain lead for regulated data services, said: “Accreditation allows us to evolve our service offering to support clients develop high value data recipient use cases as they pursue greater internal efficiencies and enhance the customer experience they offer. “Cuscal is focused on building a platform that simplifies access to the wider regulated data ecosystem, beginning with data sharing via the CDR and the newly launched payment method PayTo.” Basiq provides “tools required to acquire and analyse financial data securely”. The company claims to have more than 200 financial services company clients. Cuscal said Basiq’s skills and systems were complementary to its own and that Basiq would continue to operate as a standalone business within the Cuscal group. The combination of Cuscal’s experience in payments services and Basiq’s experience in data access and CDR puts Cuscal in a strong position to take a leading role as action initiation becomes part of CDR. The Senate is currently considering a bill that will add action initiation to the CDR. Action initiation through CDR allows a consumer to consent to an “accredited action initiator” initiating actions beyond requests for data sharing. This could involve “action service providers” switching accounts or products, making payments or updating contact details across multiple accounts on a consumer’s behalf.