Bink is a cloud-native, full-service solution for omnichannel loyalty integration and payment-linked loyalty (PLL).
Let’s take a lookout at the systems that comprise the Bink platform and how they are implemented, integrated and operated to deliver payment-linking and loyalty capabilities.
Architecture
Bink services are integrated into the Payments Ecosystem, Banking and Retail systems to create an end-to-end solution for omnichannel payment-linked loyalty.
Integrations – Omnichannel Loyalty
The Bink system enables retailer loyalty offerings and customer engagement plans to be exposed via retail banks to increase customer uptake, engagement and insight. To provide this for retailers with existing customer and loyalty solutions, Bink provides an integration between Bank loyalty wallets and retailer platforms.
Retailer customer accounts may be centralised or not and are often managed in a multitude of systems, such as E-Commerce, eCRM or dedicated Loyalty systems. The Bink platform integrates with any or all of these systems using available integration mechanisms (online or offline), including multi-system orchestration if necessary.
Integrations – Earning
When a payment-linked card (including digital wallets) is used to transact
at a retailer store or website, Bink integrates into retailer loyalty systems, providing details about the transaction to support loyalty processes and customer analysis.
The Bink solution works with payment ecosystem partner technologies such that no changes are required to retailers’ payment technologies or processes to enable payment-linked transaction identification.
Integrations – Rewarding
For retailers using Bink’s reward solution rather than an existing loyalty system, the Bink platform integrates with the retailer’s preferred rewards solution to prepare rewards for redemption.
Rewards solutions vary depending on the type of reward. For example, Vouchers may be issued by an eCommerce system, Coupons from a POS or Gift Cards from a 3rd-party service. The Bink platform integrates with the required platforms to issue rewards.
Integrations – Payment-Linked Loyalty
Retailers can also expose the Bink solution to provide payment-linking capabilities directly to their customers via their own websites and applications.
Mobile and Web applications integrate into the Bink API to set up and manage payment card links for customers. To simplify implementation,
Bink also provides drop-in web components that can be used if required.
Integrations – Technology
Bink recognise that retailers system landscapes are many and varied. As ecosystems expand over time and new technologies are introduced and replaced, capabilities and features become distributed across these systems in different, and often unique, ways.
To complement this variety of architectures, Bink’s flexible integration framework is core to the platform.
Bink uses an Adapter pattern in the integration layers of the architecture to support different integrations for each partner retailer, enabling use of:
- standard Bink integration patterns and interfaces
- out-of-the-box configurations for retailers using Bink partner Loyalty, eCRM, eCommerce and POS systems
- bespoke integrations for retailers with unique systems or requirement
For legacy systems which may not be able to meet desired availability and throughput targets at peak times, the framework provides graceful integration patterns as required (e.g. Throttling, Fallbacks, Retries, Circuit Breaker, etc.), ensuring that additional load delivered by new usage does not risk or impact existing services.
System Technology
Bink optimises the scalability, reliability and security of the solution using the latest Cloud-Native Computing Foundation technologies for microservice infrastructure and delivery such as Kubernetes Container Management and Linkerd Service Mesh.
The Bink solution is comprised of a suite of proprietary, Cloud-Native applications designed and implemented to optimise system availability and scalability leveraging the capabilities of Microsoft Azure.
Bink systems are designed with a combination of Microservices and Event-Based architecture to allow scalable resources to be dynamically allocated to independent areas of functionality across the platform. Distributing functional capability across ~60 different microservice implementations enables the system to support the necessary variety of integration patterns, simultaneously processing bulk imports and batch processing of millions of transactions without impacting live API response times and user experience.
Security
Secure implementation and operation are core to the Bink platform. In addition to Bink’s own ongoing work to continuously evaluate our security, the solution is subject to multiple independent reviews to ensure compliance with the highest levels of security standards required by our banking and payment processing partners.
Bink is Cyber Essentials Plus and PCI DSS certified, supported by 24×7 SOC coverage, delivery processes, regular audit and targeted testing covering all areas of security including:
- Secure development processes
- Configuration security
- Infrastructure and Firewall configuration
- User access control management
- Software update management
- Malware protection
- Data protection in transit
- Data protection at rest
- External penetration testing
Bink is hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud to ensure business continuity and resilience. Azure data centres are certified for extensive, industry-renowned physical protection. For more information, see Azure Datacenter Security.
Implementation
Bink retail business analysis team and banking partners work with retailers to implement their omnichannel loyalty strategy into bank channels, utilising transaction data analysis to advise and, if required, tailor loyalty offerings to best serve customers.
As part of the full-service offering, the Bink implementation team configure the service and implement any required integrations within the Bink integration framework.
