Turning data into actionable insight

Merchant Services, Cards and Payments Chief Data Office and Barclaycard Payment Solutions together delivered a great outcome for a market-leading insurance company.

Merchant Services, the Cards and Payments Chief Data Office and Barclaycard Payment Solutions have worked together, using cutting-edge Big Data technology, to provide a great outcome for one of our merchant clients, a market-leading insurance company.

This was done through our Payment Acceptance Optimisation (PAO) project, which looks at how data can be turned into actionable insight for customers, specifically improving transaction authorisation rates for Barclaycard Payment Solutions (BPS) merchants. This is a strong example of collaboration between BPS Product, the Merchant Services Transaction cycle and Data & Strategic Analytics, and was recently shortlisted as ‘Data Driven Product of the year’ at the 2018 DATA IQ awards.

The team worked together to decrease declined card transactions for genuine customers, improve the customer experience and increase revenue for the merchant. For instance, we found out instances of recurring transactions being declined due to expired cards. The team suggested the merchant take up our Account Update Service, to ensure cards are valid before payments are made. The team also found that recurring batch transactions were more likely to be declined at certain times of the day, so they provided recommendations to the client on the best time to manage their payments.

All teams were able to successfully join forces to build a solution using cutting-edge technology, deep knowledge of the business and the power of data. By working in an agile way, we were able to deliver a solution quickly and efficiently.

This is an example of the benefit and efficiencies generated for our customers and clients and for the firm by being customer obsessed and working together as one Barclays.