Brainpoint offers reliable payment systems and financial services. To improve the customer and employee experience and automate processes, Brainpoint integrated ABN AMRO’s Business Account Insight API. We held an interview with Joost van Ommen, General Manager and Jennifer den Ouden, Operations Director, to discuss their experience and benefits. We also talked about the technical integration of the API with Martijn Hengelmolen, owner of Initworks. Read more about their positive experience below.

Who is Brainpoint?

“Brainpoint provides payment systems and financial services. As a payment service provider, we have developed an omnichannel payment platform for both online and Point of Sale (POS) payments. Our platform processes online payments via iDEAL and credit cards for webshops, payments via iDEAL invoice links, QR payments and debit card transactions. We have a large variety of customers, such as restaurants and shops, but also organizers of sport events or festivals. An important part of our business is to rent out pin-terminals for a long period or a short time.”

What was the problem?

“We always want to pay our customers as soon as possible while being a hundred percent accurate. We process transactions for our clients, either online or via the pin-terminals we rent out. The pin-terminal transactions were processed with one day delay. Processing the transactions took about two and a half hours a day, and if something seemed off, for instance an amount did not match, we needed to go through all the transactions to find the possible error. We were interested in a solution that would increase efficiency, reduces risk, and delivers an earlier pay out to our customers.”

What was the solution?

“During a conversation with ABN AMRO, we discussed the available API products, and the Business Account Insight API was clearly a great solution for us. By using the API, we can retrieve real time and granular transaction information to improve the process. We partnered with IT solutions company Initworks which developed a completely new transaction processing system. The Business Account Insight API integration is an absolutely essential component for that system.”

How does it work?

“Every morning, all transactions are automatically fetched with the Business Account Insight API. They are shown in the new system and are categorized according to the transaction information, what type of payment, the terminal device, and the transaction date. We double check the information and transactions in the system. When approved, they are automatically uploaded to our accounting system. Afterwards, the transactions are paid out to our clients.”

How did the integration go?

Note: For the integration with the ABN AMRO Business Account Insight API, Brainpoint used IT services provider Initworks. They built an entirely new system to process transactions using the Business Account Insight API integration. To understand how the integration went, we talked to Martijn Hengelmolen, owner of Initworks who led the integration process.

“The integration of the Business Account Insight API was easy and straightforward. As we would expect, the documentation and the API are of high quality. The API has modern standards, for instance the JSON format, which is important as it allows us to build a modern and resilient solution. The whole process was without any issue and clear. Our engineers had a pleasant experience and they thought it was a great project to work on!”

“Integrating the Business Account Insight API improved our maintainability, scalability, and resilience.”

What are the benefits?

“We are super happy with the benefits the API and our new system brought us. The time we spend on transaction processing every day was at least two and a half hours, if there were no abnormalities. Now, it takes us less than thirty minutes. Besides, it is much easier to find issues with particular transactions. Instead of going through all the transactions, that could be hundreds of lines, we now search specifically, speeding up the process.

It also really improved the customer experience, as we can now pay out the next working day. Before, the transactions of Friday or the weekend would show on Monday and processed on Tuesday. Now, we can process the transactions of the weekend on Monday morning. Our clients are really happy with that. The faster pay out gives us real competitive advantage, which of course improves our sales pitch.”

Benefits:

• Improved customer experience: faster transaction processing and clear reporting.
• Better employee experience: increased ease of use and less manual steps.
• Increased reliability: better maintenance and reduced risk if something goes wrong.
• Increased sales: new client prospects due to the improvements.
• Automated statistic reporting: insight into client information, for instance if an invoice is still outstanding.

“We are very happy that we could reduce our handling time for transaction processing by 80%.”

More information?

Check out the Business Account Insight API.