Digital Bank for Retail Development

Client's Background

Our client is one of the leading food retail companies in the Eastern European region:

Total assets were $16.2 billion for the last 12 months.
57,600 daily online orders in the second quarter of 2021. 62,900,000 active loyalty card users as of 30 Jun 2021.
It is an innovation group because it implements cutting-edge solutions like biometrics “pay with a glance” at self-service checkout terminals.

Our client manages a few retail brands, which are among the world’s Top-250 retailers in the Global Powers of Retailing 2020 (https://www2.deloitte.com).

A retailer was looking for growth solutions on the market. Besides, our client has been seeking synergy between the retail and banking business.

Business Challenge for Digital Bank for Retail Chain Development

If you are one of the leaders in the retail business, what would you do to find and onboard more customers? What would you do to improve your customers’ journey? How to get more loyal shoppers? How to effectively launch new products on the market?

We need to solve retail customers’ inconveniences as more than 90% of purchases are made physically at stores. Thus people hate long queues (nobody has extra time for that), using cash (banknotes and coins), and paper receipts (they are always lost and not eco-friendly).

It’s essential to admit that every retail company wants to have more significant average purchases and frequency of shopping within its customer base. And every bank wants to get more new customers and more services to be used by existing ones.

It is believed that this is the sort of business that will enable our customer to be even closer to the clients and to offer convenient new possibilities for them.

Our Digital Bank for Retailer Solution

Customers of our client had cards with loyalty programs only. The main idea of solution implementation was to upgrade single loyalty cards to banking and loyalty cards all in one. The solution would be implemented within the mobile client’s apps by adding fintech services. The supplier of all banking services should be the required-Bank. As a result, customers would use a new card as two-in-one: payment method and customer identification for a loyalty program.

The client’s bank was embedded in the partnering supermarkets apps. New fintech services made the previous onboarding process easy and fast. Customers could issue the banking card by filling a simple KYC form and getting their digital card built in the app within seconds. After that, a customer could add a card to Apple or Google pay and request a physical card delivery. We used a middleware layer based on Node-RED to unite apps in one solution.

There are several clear benefits for banks, retailers, and customers:

Bank gets access to a far more extensive customer base, with an excellent opportunity to cross-sell and upsell for new and existing customers. In our case, client’s Group customer base (identified customers with their contact teals) is ten times bigger than Bank’s one;
Retailers reduce the transaction costs for cashless payments by incentivizing customers to pay with the card issued by the same bank where a retailer holds its account. The savings could be up to 1% from a bill amount. This is significant considering that retailers usually work with meager margins. Moreover, retailers could enjoy the larger quantity of identified purchases;
Customers are not only getting a better experience but also enjoying benefits. For example, a client’s bank is giving up to 2% of cashback to specific categories of goods, which is a relatively strong motivation to use a two-in-one credit card instead of just a loyal one.

A Client’s Bank’s customers flow seemed as following:

Onboarding via the retail app.
Instant card issuing.
Adding Apple or Google pay.
Purchasing and getting bonuses.
Card management, refilling, and transactions via popular supermarket apps.

Digital Bank for Retail Development Process

Our client is a single Digital Bank for different retail chains of the Group.

It was important for our client and partnering banks to develop and launch the banking solution within three months and following banking key features:

Card Issuing

Client’s Bank consists of issuing two digital cards for different partnering supermarket group stores.

Client’s digital cards have a purchase’s cashback of 2% at partnering supermarkets and are costless to serve by the bank.

Money Transfer

Customers can transfer their money from card to card using its number.

Card Refill

Customers can top up the card via partnering supermarkets. Customers can top up the card via partnering-Bank or another bank’s ATM if they have a plastic card.

Payments

App users can make payments with partnering digital cards for a range of services such as mobile communications, utilities, TV, Internet, and transport.

Card Management and Security settings

Naturally, partnering supermarket apps users can change a password and pin-code for the card, lock and unlock it, change the balance, and get bank details. All these actions are supported with SMS-code checking.

Digital Bank for Retailer Compliant with International Security Standards

42flows.tech’s solution, Digital Bank for Retailers, operates with customer data and finance. It was necessary to ensure security compliance. That is why we used interaction with internal banking systems Passport and Cerberus for every action of getting some card information.

Also, we have used the following security compliance tools:

Unique API keys (Keycloak) for session creation.
JSON Web Token for correct user’s authorization.

Integrations during Development of Digital Bank for Retail

We have provided integration with the core retail system to ensure a stable connection with data and customers’ bases for exchanging, adding and deleting data operations. Also, this integration gives us information about loyalty program rules for providing banking operations correctly.

The On-Premise deployment gave us the ability to control sensitive data (such as personal data, phone numbers, banking accounts, etc.).

There is integration with the core banking system to ensure a safe connection with banking data and provide banking operations in retail apps.

We used the Microservice Architecture to simplify banking and retail APIs. Also, it allowed us to change customer flow faster than using another way of developing.

Integration with Natural Language Processing (Dialogflow technology) ensures uncommon script for the communication between the customers and Digital Bank for Retail.

Node-RED was an open-source technology for calling each microservice in the correct order for getting needed results.

Business Results

42flows.tech has delivered the MVP product of Digital Bank for Retailer faster than the estimated deadline of three months. Client’s Group and partnering Bank have got following results in less than the first two weeks:

The retail and banking companies received a lot of new customers thanks to the novel Digital Banking product launching for B2B2C businesses.
Two weeks following the release, client’s Bank has issued 33,000 cards.
MVP product is available in 10 cities with a significant density of client’s Group’s stores.

Forecasts for Digital Bank for Retailer

For our Client’s Digital Bank, there is a scaling development in a pipeline. Our forecasts for product 2.0 are:

Our partners will have more purchases via the client’s Bank and there will be higher average receipts.
Our solution is based on easy-to-scale technologies that allow additional integrations with different partners and beyond.
Client’s Bank is proof of collaboration feasibility between companies from different industries. Such solutions could create new opportunities from technical and business points of view.

All the aforementioned have proved that such kinds of solutions as client’s Bank (a digital banking collaboration between retailer and bank) have already changed game rules, bringing new products and services for customers. And ultimately, everybody wins. Both retail and banking businesses get higher incomes. Customers get more benefits and more convenient services. What industries do collaborate next?

Finding a professional technical solution provider with hands-on expertise is crucial to support your business ideas.

42flows.tech is happy to support your challenges! Just get in touch with us: success@42flows.tech.

Wish to read more about the digital solutions of our company? You are welcome to explore our case study section. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or remarks?