Australian-based mx51 provides a suite of white-label services to banks and finance institutions which allows them to offer in-store, phone, and online payment capabilities to their customers.

“When we were first established in 2019, our small team of staff relied on little more than a series of relational databases to store data generated by our microservices,” said Steven Hadley, Chief Product Officer at mx51. “However, as data volumes grew, it became clear that a different approach would be required.”

“Back then, a key driver for us was wanting to have a better ability to run queries. Prior to Snowflake, if you wanted to run queries across multiple databases there was no easy way for this to be done.”

The hunt for an alternative

The mx51 IT team began by evaluating a range of alternatives for a new data platform. Hosting an on-premise instance of a Postgres database was also considered, however, the management and maintenance overheads were deemed to be too high.

“At the end of the day, it became clear that Snowflake was the best fit for our requirements,” said Hadley. “We were particularly impressed with its ability to scale and to integrate with our front-end tools.”

Deployment began with an initial proof-of-concept. This involved extracting data from a number of Postgres databases and providing answers to relatively simple user queries. Once it was clear that the approach worked, additional data was added and user numbers quickly grew.

“Snowflake now underpins our entire business intelligence efforts,” said Hadley “It is used by everyone from our product team to finance and senior management who use it to assist in strategic planning.”

“It allows queries to be quickly answered and provides a clear picture of what is going on within the payments infrastructures of our customers.”

Improved customer support

As well as providing in-house support for analytics and business intelligence activity, Snowflake is also used by the mx51 support team to resolve any merchant issues that might arise. For example, if a retailer is experiencing issues with a terminal, data from the machine can be quickly accessed and analysed to determine the best resolution.

“It also allows us to provide proactive support for our customer’s customers,” said Hadley. “If a problem is identified that may have an impact on other merchants, our team can contact them and make them aware that a solution is being devised ahead of potential issues occurring. This sets us apart from other payment firms on the market.”

Future plans

With growth in merchant and transaction numbers continuing to increase, Hadley said there will be further ways in which Snowflake can support the company in the future.

“We will be using Snowflake to support more detailed analysis and reporting of transactions for merchants. This will allow merchants to do things such as altering their trading patterns or augmenting their product ranges to improve sales and revenues.”

This will be achieved by enhancing a merchant-facing portal that provides a data feed from installed terminals. The dashboard will give a holistic view of the merchant’s payment system, as well as providing the ability to drill down to see specific transactions.

“I’m confident we now have in place a data platform that will be able to grow and support us for many years to come,” said Hadley. “It will also enable us to gain insights and use BI tools in ways that previously would not have been possible.”

About Snowflake

Snowflake enables every organisation to mobilise their data with Snowflake’s Data Cloud. Customers use the Data Cloud to unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, and execute diverse analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single data experience that spans multiple clouds and geographies. Thousands of customers across many industries, including 187 of the 2020 Fortune 500 as of April 30, 2021, use Snowflake Data Cloud to power their businesses. Learn more at snowflake.com

About mx51

mx51 is a bank-grade payments-as-a-service platform that enables banks and non-bank acquirers to provide modern and seamless multi-channel payments and value-added solutions to merchants.