Customer base_icon

53.000

SMEs
Retail customers_icon

520.000+

retail customers
Money_icon

$20,460,000

bank profit annually

Prerequisites for Middleware Implementation

Kredobank operates in a competitive banking market, where banks have to fight hard for new consumers. And if a bank is not a leader, it needs to be intelligent and flexible with its customer base to onboard new customers and reactivate current ones.

KredoBank has a big customer base but not an active one. So the business task KredoBank wanted to take on was to increase the rate of consumer engagement by launching a new solution – a loyalty program that pays new customers a monetary reward and reactivates current customers with the help of welcome bonuses.

Previously, KredoBank needed a flexible platform to automate business logic to launch new products. Classical core banking systems don’t usually provide an opportunity to be flexible in their creation.

That is why the KredoBank main technical task was to make a flexible platform that would quickly launch different customer-engagement experiments.

With the mentioned problem, KredoBank got in touch with us. We proposed to implement the Middleware layer.

Our Solution – Middleware Implementation

Middleware _ image

Middleware allows the bank to unify access to various back-end systems in the form of an understandable and publicly available API. As KredoBank uses heavy core banking systems, it was the right choice. The layer has created a robust base for elaborating and scaling the next business products without difficult programming interruptions.

In order for KredoBank to launch a loyalty program, we developed a Middleware layer to make the computation of welcome bonuses for the loyalty program feasible. It is only one way to use the Middleware layer in banking. The layer is responsible for customers’ operations analysis and accounting for the client’s compliance with the rules for the loyalty program.

Briefly about the characteristics of our Middleware solution:

  • It is built on Node-RED and Node.js technologies.
  • Our solution allows easy horizontal scaling under loads. It handles 500,000+ computations per day.
  • The solution has separate environments for developing, testing, and operating Middleware.
  • The Middleware layer has one external integration and uses 19+ methods for calling the APIs from Node-RED.

Implementing the Middleware layer at KredoBank’s Вusiness Рrocess Model and Notation helped to reduce development time several times and allowed the bank to bring the product to market quickly.

Benefits of Node-RED for Middleware Implementation

KredoBank has chosen Node-RED as a technology for Middleware implementation taking into account the following criterias:

  • Node-RED is a low-code programming tool. It means you don’t have to be a developer to change something in the architecture.
  • This technology is open-source. Using open-source software has no license fees; it gives the ability to change the code; the company is confident about the solution’s future function because IBM continues its development.
  • It is easy to find specialists for changing the solution on Node-RED technology.

To learn more about the benefits of Middleware implementation we recommend reading an article about this topic written by 42flows.tech CTO, Maksym Popov.

Technical Challenge of Middleware Implementation

Our challenge was to securely integrate our solution with core banking systems. We needed to:

  • Get a connection with customers – send them messages about the fulfillment of conditions or not.
  • Obtain the information about customers: number of transactions, accounts, how many conditions were completed for eligibility in the loyalty program.
  • Account for card transactions to verify compliance with the terms of the loyalty program.

We solved this challenge by using a Middleware layer between the core banking system on XML and the database on FTP. Our layer helped us to make the stable and strong connections that gave us needed access to beginning to launch a PoC for KredoBank.

Middleware _ image2

Integrations during the Middleware implementation

The main advantage of using the Middleware layer was the minimum number of integrations. It gives the solution an opportunity to take less time to process and make decisions.

In the development, we still used the integration with Banking API. Such a connection is made by API calls from our solution to the banking systems. Middleware layer requests the calls for:

  • API external systems (bank systems) that give us the opportunity to get, update and send information about customers.
  • Checking customers compliance with the conditions of the loyalty program.
  • Generating and delivering to the bank documents for the bonus payment.
  • Sending messages to the customers (messages about transactions, about changing loyalty program rules, about the current compliance with the conditions, etc).

Business Results

As a result, the development of logic took a month, including integration with the necessary systems and the team’s acquaintance. That was significantly faster and cheaper than completing the development of current core banking systems.

Our Middleware layer, written on technology Node-RED, gave KredoBank these opportunities to:

  • Make quick decisions without developers interaction.
  • Have no cost changing because Node-RED is an open-source program.
  • Scale the solution by the server’s division into parts in case of load. As we mentioned before, the Middleware layer handles 500,000 computations per day on two Node-RED services.

 

If you want to know more or have any questions, please get in touch with us at success@42flows.tech.

Wish to read more about the other 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?

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