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Success stories

How bunq provides data-driven insights

Ondřej Slivka
5
min read

Initial situation

  • in-house bunq team ensuring enrichment of merchant’s logo database  
  • database of approximately 300 logos with no localization or any further information
  • basic rule-based categorization of payments into manually created sub-accounts

About bunq
A European challenger bank based in Amsterdam and one of the world’s first mobile-only banks. From the start in 2015, bunq has risen quickly in popularity, allowing its customers to: set up bank accounts, make payments, split checks, and transfer funds to friends all from a single mobile app.  Since then, bunq expanded to all EU countries.

bunq - bank of The Free

The goal

Focus on customer experience and speed-up innovation

  • Implement high performing simple to integrate solution with minimum intervention to internal systems
  • Cut the go-to-market time of new features involving data insights
  • Provide higher relevance for clients by increasing recognition rate of TX
  • Reduce costs and keep focus on product development not data cleansing
  • Teach customers sustainable spending habits with CO2 footprint tracker

The challenger bank was looking to extend its product offering with a digital service that helps customers get a better overview of their day-to-day spending

50% of mobile banking app users claim a need for a better overview of their finances. 25% admitted having a hard time controlling their spending.

“People are looking for a clear idea of what they spent and where. It’s so much easier for people to understand their spending habits when they can visually see what’s happening. While looking for a solution to this, we found TapiX. They’ve helped us give people a much better insight into their spending, and we’ve saved a tonne of time in the process. Using TapiX gave us a really high-quality product, in a very short period of time.”

Tom Bilske | Product owner at bunq

Solution

Step 1 – provide basic transparency to payments

Clean & visual payments overview and transaction detail

At first, in 2018, bunq implemented TapiX's payment data enrichment solution resulting in clear transaction detail overview with accurate merchant name, logo, GPS, location and categorization

In addition to that, bunq implemented transfer enrichment based on TapiX's product portfolio extension

TapiX’s merchant recognition, logos, GPS, categorization, transfer enrichment, Google Places ID, merchant URL
TapiX’s merchant recognition, logos, GPS, categorization, transfer enrichment, Google Places ID, merchant URL

Step 2 – overview of the spending and budgets

Data driven spending insights

At the end of 2019 bunq launched the Insights section under the "Me" tab.  

bunq utilizes Tapix data also to "bulk" categorize all outgoing payments automatically. By knowing where the money is spent and having the ability to set saving goals, clients can save up to 10% without any effort.

TapiX’s categorization in bunq application
Built on: TapiX’s categorization

Step 3 – deep dive into specific use cases: subscription overview

Overview of recurring payments

In 2020 bunq introduced a new "My subscription" tab in the budgeting overview

This resulted in providing clients with one less step to achieve more saving goals.

TapiX’s subscription recognition and income detection
Built on: TapiX’s subscription recognition and income detection. TapiX contributed by developing tailored detection algorithms to recognize recurring payments.  

Step 4 – promoting sustainability with EcoTrack

Building healthy spending habits with CO2 footprint categorisation

Sustainability plays key role in bunq’s approach to finance. TapiX tailored it's categorisation with eco-friendly/sustainable transaction tags to fuel greener spendings.

Now, users can also gain valuable insights into the CO2footprint of their purchases through carbon calculations TapiX added withEcoTrack, going beyond the regular MCC. The aim is to enable users to make educated choices while conducting day-to-day transactions, ensuring that every purchase aligns with their sustainability goals.  

Hot spots and sustainability driven categorization
Built on: TapiX’s categorization, GPS
Community building tip: bunq is bringing the community together by showing hot spots visited by other bunqers.

Integration

Bunq chose to integrate TapiX API in a cloud hosted version. In comparison to on premise version integration effort is minimum with no impact on infrastructure and other internal systems.

Enriched data are stored within infrastructure of the bank where it can be accessed by all systems and applications without further interaction with Dateio.

While stored in the bank, TapiX API is automatically able to update the data and keep them up to date, increase data quality, or even allow new use cases requiring changes in data.  

GDPR ready
No clients’ personal data are shared during data enrichment process, so no additional consent is required.
Dateio is  ISO 27 000 certified and GDPR compliant.

Results

90% - transactions are categorized

86% - transactions have clean merchant name

52% - localization rate

17k – logo database

208k - recognized merchants in use

99.9%+ - data accuracy

  • The initial database of 300 merchants with logos was extended to 208 000 merchants with 17 000+ logos
  • Enrichment of year back historical transactions was provided to provide meaningful data right from the start
  • TapiX’s global coverage is keeping up the pace with bunq as they continue to scale up and expand to new markets  
As an entirely mobile bank, the pressures of innovating to match expectations is something that we thrive under. The mobile revolution has made a massive impact on society both in the way we communicate but also the rate at which we want our needs to be met. This is something that our partners at Dateio clearly agree on.

Ali Niknam | Founder & CEO at bunq

About author

Ondřej Slivka

Senior insider

A seasoned B2B marketing enthusiast with 5+ years of experience sharing insights in the world of digital banking and fintech. My passion lies in crafting innovative strategies and engaging content that delivers desired results.

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