Australia's first non-financial services CDR use case launches

The new service leverages card purchase data and cutting-edge data-matching AI technology to alert consumers if they have visited a COVID exposure site. It is an example of using Open Banking and using data for good.  

The free service, called COVID Hotspot Alert, sends users who made a card purchase at a hotspot venue or suburb a text message alerting them of their exposure. Currently only available to NSW residents outside of Greater Sydney, Victoria and Queensland soon to come, and with the capability to expand quickly into other states where hotspot alert data exists, it draws on NSW Health data and leverages an individual’s transaction purchase data. It is made possible by the Consumer Data Right (CDR) - a heavily regulated data-sharing regime which gives consumers control and ownership of their own data. 

COVID Hotspot Alert was created by Adatree - Australia’s only accredited and active intermediary of the CDR, and a fintech company at the forefront of Open Banking. 

COVID Hotspot Alert works by matching customer spend data and COVID exposure site data to notify users who have transacted at a venue of concern within minutes of NSW Health announcing it. Currently, the public experiences NSW Health Alert delays of up to four days behind exposure sites warning customers and staff, due to its manual nature. COVID Hotspot Alert provides a faster and more reliable solution to combat these delays - in 0.03% of the time of a manual contact tracer - in addition to overcoming difficulties for consumers keeping up with daily hotspot lists. 

COVID Hotspot Alert operates by using c artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse raw transactional banking data and COVID location data to create a data-matching algorithm. Once a user provides consent for Adatree to collect its data for matching, the service will continuously analyse data in the background and alert users when they are at risk. 

The efficient data analysis and transformation of CDR transaction data across different banks is made possible using AWS Glue DataBrew and AWS Athena. The cloud-native service development was made using the AWS Serverless Application Model and integrated within the Adatree ADR Platform within just a day.

The non-revenue generating service is currently in its Public Beta Phase, and users can join the waitlist via the website. Once accepted, they will receive an email link to a consent registration form which grants Adatree access to use their data only for the purpose of receiving hotspot alerts. Customers can revoke their consent at any time if they choose to do so. Once registered, users will only receive a text message when somewhere they have made a card purchase is later deemed a venue or location of concern. 

COVID Hotspot Alert is complementary to the Government QR code check-in system and does not replace it.