Announced cooperation between Neontri and PKO Bank Polski

Banking Transaction Enrichment: How Data Enrichment Can Optimize Customer Transactions

Nowadays, financial institutions have to provide innovative solutions to satisfy client expectations. Proper transaction enrichment can increase customer satisfaction.

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In the highly competitive and regulated banking markets, financial institutions have to implement new, modern solutions to keep up with changing client expectations. Lack of proper transaction details can strain the bank’s resources and lead to customer dissatisfaction.

Objective

The challenge was twofold: to ensure compliance with stringent regulations and enhance customer service. This is where Neontri came into play, offering a robust solution to improve customer satisfaction through banking transaction enrichment.

Expectations

Neontri’s role was to provide a solution to add the missing information to banking transactions and proper categorization so that customers could easily identify their purchases.

Transaction data enrichment technology allows for such categorization. Moreover, transactions also get merchant logos, locations, and contact information to facilitate purchase identification for users.

Outcomes

PKO Bank Polski, the biggest Polish bank and our long-term client, expected to implement a solution that could provide customers with payment details to make it easier to identify where and when the transaction occurred. This way, customers could quickly recall their transactions thanks to data enrichment.

The aim was for the customers to identify the unknown purchases, which most likely stemmed from the lack of context in transactions.

Process

Our job was to add a data enrichment solution to fill in the information gaps for the clients. The solution for data enrichment was Snowdrop’s API for advanced enriched transactions. We implemented it into the bank’s system to provide it with a proper data enrichment system for banking transactions.

What was taken into account when choosing the solution? First of all, the quality of data that was introduced through the data enrichment process. Secondly, cost optimization was also very important. Finally, the bank needed real-time data enrichment for transactions to improve user experience.

We based the solution on a reliable tech stack from DataStax, our long-term partner. Their real-time data management system, already present in the bank’s architecture, enables the handling of vast amounts of data with scalability and low latency, which is essential for the transaction enrichment process.

Challenges

Image highlighting challenges of the solution: ensure compliance with stringent regulations and maintain high customer service

The first challenge was to implement a solution that could handle big data in retail and provide real-time transaction data enrichment for a large user base. That’s why Snowdrop Solutions was chosen in this case.

Another challenge was meeting technical requirements, such as caching transaction data within the legally permissible period, which varied for various purchases.

We had to address the legal constraints for storing information depending on the market and transaction types. That’s why we implemented a solution that is valid for all transactions and requires extensive preparation and customization.

The next challenge was implementing real-time data enrichment. Even though the process seemed complicated, it didn’t significantly impact the project timeline. Implementing the data management system took about three months.

Cooperation

Our team included three programmers and a project manager. We used the agile methodology with two-week sprints and changed requirements depending on the performance testing the bank covered.

Technology

The key technologies used in the project were: 

  • C++ was used for performance reasons to process and save data.
  • Python and FastAPI were used for API integrations as they enabled easy changes to fit requirements.
  • DataStax Enterprise (Apache Cassandra) was part of the bank’s architecture, which had already been implemented to handle big transactional data in real time.

The two main components were handled using different technologies, such as Apache Kafka, RESTful API, OpenShift (environment), and Terraform, that address specific needs and requirements. 

Results

Initially, many large brands lacked sufficient contextual information, making it difficult to guarantee precise locations. The challenge was addressed by continuously refining transaction enrichment API, enabling PKO Bank Polski to accurately map most of these brands, even in case of incomplete or ambiguous data.

Transaction data enrichment solution was further tailored to the Polish market by processing nearly a thousand unique merchant names and accurately locating hundreds of merchants previously missing their location IDs.

Through cooperation with Snowdrop, we developed custom logo identities and regional-specific information for PKO Bank Polski, significantly improving the localization and transparency of transaction data.

Transaction enrichment has helped PKO Bank Polski consistently maintain an impressive accuracy rate, enhancing customer trust and delivering a more reliable digital banking experience. Since its launch in the summer of 2024, the solution has enriched 1,392,000,000 card operations, as well as online and BLIK payments.

Moreover, many banks still don’t offer such a technology to their customers. Thus, introducing transaction data enrichment gives PKO Bank Polski leverage and increases its competitiveness.

This solution could also lower the number of reports to customer service concerning translation details. Thanks to transaction data enrichment, customers are better informed about their purchases and don’t have to question the ones that can be easily labeled in real time.

Written by
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Dorota Jasińska

Content Specialist
Marcin Dobosz

Marcin Dobosz

Director of Technology
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