Treasury excises screen-scraping fintechs from the bottom of its shoe

Australia’s once celebrated Consumer Data Right and the cornucopia of exotic fintech and flip-and-clip services like Finder could soon have their business models and core transactional technologies turned on their head, after minister for financial services Stephen Jones and Treasury finally moved to put a limit on one of the industry’s most dangerous vulnerabilities: screen scraping.

In a move that will send a shudder down the spines of many venture capital investors who have, for the past five years, been riding a wave of fast money following increasingly frisky and risky products, the fuse has been lit on a series of urgent reforms that are certain to blow up some very ugly surprises.