Success Story Financial Services

Global Payment Provider Makes Wearables and Analytics Pay Off

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Wirecard offers an innovative, digital platform for cashless payments that can be customized to any industry. Its global, multi-channel platform bundles international payment acceptance and processing with robust fraud prevention to streamline transactions for merchants and consumers.

The payments industry is highly competitive, driven by exemplary service and new technologies that innovate the customer and merchant experience. Wirecard engaged Apexon in 2016 to accelerate two major initiatives.

  • Wirecard a payment processor and financial services provider with 5,000+ EMPLOYEES

    5,000+ employees

  • CUSTOMERS AROUND THE WORLD

    25,000 customers around the world

  • MORE THAN 200 INTERNATIONAL PAYMENT NETWORKS

    Connects more than 200 international payment networks

data engineering and analytics platform in payment solution

The first involved expanding its mobile payment platform to support capabilities for new wearable technologies and devices. They were looking for an application that could demonstrate all the capabilities of its wearable payment solutions in combination with its consumer card platform and pre-paid card issuing platform. Target customers included theme parks, stadiums, festivals and ski resorts.

The second was the development of a data engineering and analytics platform to help their merchants derive valuable business insights to enhance the experience for their customers and identify new opportunities for upsell and cross-sell.

the Customer
Journey
2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2016
  • Wearable Companion Application

2017
  • RuPay Card Payment Services Integration
  • 10Stamps Upgrade

2018
  • Alexa Demo Wien Ticket

2019
  • Smart Mirror
  • LMS Development
  • Pentaho DBB Requirement

2020
  • Temi Robot MVP
  • TemiBbot Hospitality SetUp

the Results

Key Outcomes

Business Expansion

Business
Expansion

Extended mobile payment platform offering to a new segment of wearable device users

Improved Customer Experience

Improved
Customer Experience

Application of latest technologies enhanced customer image, payment convenience, and payer engagement

Increased Revenues

Increased
Revenues

As a result of new data insights, increased merchant transactions

Our methodology

how
we did it

Apexon works with companies across the digital lifecycle.

Go Digital
Go Digital

Accelerating the delivery of new digital initiatives with confidence

Be digital
Be digital

Creating the infrastructure and foundation to scale digital initiatives

Evolve Digital
Evolve Digital

Leveraging data and analytics to continuously improve digital delivery processes

Launch & Experiment

Automate & Accelerate

Be Intelligent & Autonomous

Launch & Experiment

Enable digital adoption in a quick, and agile manner

Apexon helped Wirecard extend their business in the fast-growing wearables payment market with minimal risk.

Automate & Accelerate

Build digital infrastructure and foundation for enterprises to scale

Apexon provided a platform for mobile development and QE that enabled the company to address the different technical complexities and requirements of various wearable devices, payment platforms and communication protocols.

Be Intelligent & Autonomous

Leverage data engineering to make strategic decisions and get digital right every time

Apexon put a data engineering infrastructure in place for Wirecard, providing its merchant clients with new, high- value services to help grow their business.

The challenge

TO overcome technical obstacles

Wearables Application for payment solution

Wearables Application

At the time wearables represented the latest in payment technology and customer convenience. The category was projected to grow by as much as 60% between 2016 and 2020. There were simple wearables in the form of passive bands with EMV contactless chips and smart wearables designed for everyday use featuring data display, NFC and BLE connectivity, long battery life and a variety of device-specific functionality.

Wirecard needed to support both types and devices and connect them to its consumer credit card and pre-paid card issuing platforms. The company also needed to ensure secure data flow between the wearables and those platforms and meet all PCI compliance requirements.

Data Engineering and Analytics

Data Engineering and Analytics

Wirecard was sitting on top of an enormous amount of valuable payment data and saw an opportunity to help its merchants with value-added data services that could inform loyalty programs, help identify opportunities for upsell and cross-sell, and construct more intelligent pricing strategies and product placements.

But it did not have the necessary expertise in data engineering and analytics. Additionally, an increasing portion of the data it was receiving from its merchant customers was unstructured, making it very difficult to analyze. It wanted to stay ahead of its competition in this area and had aggressive goals for product launch to multiple merchants.

The Solution

Functionality Testing, QA, Data Engineering and Analytics

Wearables Application

Wearables Application

The project scope included application concept and development as well as all functional testing and QA. Functionality was delivered in two stages:

Stage One:
  • User Management and Wearable Band Mapping – managing users on the consumer card platform and mapping their wearable bands with their card accounts
  • Wearable Management – selecting and pairing wearables, from simple EMV tags to BLE SmartBands
  • Payment Source Management – adding and selecting multiple payment cards (credit or debit) and switching between cards
  • Payment Transactions – enabling EMV contactless payments, closed-loop payment for SmartBands, the ability to check account balances and transaction histories, and top off pre-paid card accounts

Stage two:
  • Integration of Loyalty Programs – via an SDK for merchants to activate consumer engagement campaigns via the wearable devices
  • Location-Based Offers/Alerts/Actions Leveraging Beacons – e.g. navigation, coupons and personalized services such as ordering food from a seat at a stadium
  • Interactive Games and Attractions – to drive deeper engagement with teams, performers and brands
  • NFC Tapping Interaction – for accessing social media, local features and services, etc.
  • Token Replenishment – via NFC or BLE

Data Engineering and Analytics

Data Engineering and Analytics

Apexon’s data engineering and analytics services involved multiple aspects to help derive new business insights and enhance the customer experience for the company. These included:

  • Translation of unstructured data to structured format

    Translation of unstructured data to structured format

  • Customer behavioral segmentation

    Customer behavioral segmentation based on purchase behaviors

  • Payment Source Management

    Development of an algorithm enabling targeted and personalized marketing

  • targeted and personalized marketing

    Analysis of customer value and classification of customer maturity and personas

  • Analysis of customer value and classification

    Identification of strengths of association between pairs of products purchased together and patterns of co-occurrence

  • Identification of strengths

    If/then scenario rules and algorithm

  • If/then scenario rules and algorithm

    Predictive models for cross-selling and up-selling

  • Predictive models

    Web services and algorithm to analyze unified data

  • extend the solution to merchants

    Ability to quickly extend the solution to merchants

As a result, Wirecard was able to deliver value-added services to its merchant customers ahead of any competitive offerings and continue to differentiate it services with new customers.