Understanding Backbase and its Services
What is Backbase?
Backbase is a platform that helps Banks and other Financial Institutions to go fully digital across multiple channels. It is an omnichannel digital banking platform that helps in manipulating the data from core-banking systems to digital customer experience across multiple channels.
Let’s see Omnichannel in more detail
Omnichannel Platforms are like multichannel platforms with multiple touchpoints of interaction, but the major difference is that omnichannel is interconnected but multi-channels are not interconnected to each other. Let's see this as an example, I had debited some amount of cash from the nearby ATM, then our mobile will send us a message that some amount of cash has been debited through ATM from your account. So mobile is giving a notification when I have made a transaction through ATM. Even when you log in to your Internet Banking, you can also see the last transaction details. This is the property of the Omni-channel Platform.
Architecture of Backbase
The Architecture of Backbase comprises three layers. Let’s study these layers in detail.
- Platform Layer: When the customer logins the bank, or signup to the application. The processes which first interact with the customer come under the platform layer. Take an example, when a customer signs up, the details of the customer that are required to open a bank account (banking term: onboarding a customer) comes under this layer only. In the above figure, we can see that it is the lowermost layer of the backbase architecture. Authentication, onboarding, etc, come under this layer.
- Digital Sales Layer: When the customer is successfully onboarded. Now when the customer is exploring the bank application, the flow in which he is traversing the application, comes under Sales Layer. As an example, if the customer is having a salary of around 25k then he gets a loan limit of not more than 15L. This calculation is done based on the behavior of the customer’s transaction. This is the middle Layer of the Backbase architecture.
- Digital Banking Layer: It is the top layer of the Backbase architecture. It is built to provide everything a bank needed to go to fully digital. If you want to perform a transaction, check your balance, open any other special type of account then it is done in the Digital Banking Layer.
On the top of these layers, we can see that there are some banking streams present there. Like Retail Banking, SME Banking, Corporate Banking, and Wealth Management. Let’s see each of them briefly.
- Retail Banking: A Retail Banking feature is useful for users having one account. A user can see his balance, send or receive money from other users, can apply for products like Credit Card, Debit Card, etc. From the name itself, we are getting, that this type of banking is for Retail Customers.
- SME/Corporate Banking: SME means Small and Medium Enterprises or Businesses. This banking is offered for small and medium enterprises businesses as well as corporate businesses. It has the features like Dashboards for multiple users and their levels. Like in an organization, the CEO of that organization will have more access than a low-level employee.
- Wealth Management: This banking is used for trading purposes. It provides the features like Performance Insight and Allocation Charts for the Share Market about the status of shares and their current market value.
Services Provided By Backbase
Backbase provides us generally three types of Services, which are:
- Infrastructure and Platform Services (IPS)
- Digital Banking Services (DBS)
- Customer Experience Services (CXS)
Let’s deep dive into each of these services —
Infrastructure and Platform Services (IPS)
This service acts as an entry point for all the requests which are generated from the customers. It is also responsible the track all the customers' requests and the load balancing of the customer requests if the customer’s requests are too much that can’t be handled alone, so IPS will create a replica of that service with customer's requests the help of the microservices. It also connects all the backbase services.
Why IPS is necessary?
To answer is this question, let's analyze the below figure.
In the above figure, we can see that there are nos of customer requests (emotions) that are hitting the Digital Banking Services (If you don’t know what DBS is, don’t worry, we will be seeing DBS later on in this blog). Let’s take an example blue emotions are valid requests hitting the DBS and one in the top-right corner red emotion is an invalid request hitting the DBS. DBS will not able to identify which are the valid requests and which are the invalid requests. So, here IPS comes into the Game, it is acting as a Gateway that prevents all the invalid requests from hitting the DBS services.
One more thing, suppose DBS or CXS are getting so many requests they are unable to handle it, here IPS also helps them by load-balancing their requests with the help of microservices.
Components of IPS
Let’s study IPS in detail, what are the services present in IPS, and what are their functionalities.
- Edge Service- It routes all services to DBS, CXS.
- Registry Service- It controls which service is located where.
- Authentication Service- Validate user access.
- Token Converter- Converts external tokens to internal tokens.
Let’s study each of the services in detail —
Edge Service has the following features:
- When the customer request is made, it interacts with the edge service, to check the authenticity of the customer’s request and where the customer request is pointing to.
- It routes all the customer requests to DBS/CXS as per the needs of the customer.
- It uses BAS token converter to convert to internal tokens and appends to request after the user is authenticated.
- Synchronize with registry service to locate.
Registry Service
It has the following features:
- Registry service is acting as a guide, that helps the edge service to locate where a particular service is present.
- Through service discovery, registry service is helping the edge service in finding the particular service.
- This service is based on Eureka, a service discovery component of Spring Cloud Netflix.
Authentication Service is used to validate the user, whether it is authentic or not.
Remember, the red emotion, will be blocked from here, and unable to hit the DBS services, since it is an inauthentic user.
The token converter is used to convert external tokens to internal tokens that are used by services. It uses BAS Token Converter to convert external tokens to internal tokens. The external token comes with the customer’s request, now it is converted to internal tokens after getting to which service, the customer wants to go.
This is all about the Infrastructure and Platform Services.
Digital Banking Services (DBS)
Digital Banking Services can be said as the heart of the Backbase System. All the functionalities which a Bank is required are present here. DBS provides the high-available, responsive, and modern backend to banking apps.
Here, in the above figure, we can see that DBS performs all the banking functions whether Payments. Transactions, Access Control, etc. DBS connects with Core Banking Services, which coordinates with the bank to perform the specific operations. The functionalities which bank provides like, if you want to transfer funds to your friend or at any store, DBS is responsible. If you want to check whether your salary has been credited or not, DBS will help you with this.
Benefits of DBS
- Responsive and fast- DBS processes in real-time and it responds very immediately. It connects with the core banking system.
- Straight through Processing- DBS doesn’t have any limitations that result in very fast.
- Expandable data storage without coding- It allows the extension to the data model without coding. Eg- It allows a third party to enrich transactions.
Architecture of DBS
DBS are grouped into capabilities. In the previous figure, in DBS we saw that there are different blocks are present like Payments, Transactions, etc. Those blocks are the capabilities only. Each capability includes one or more services. As an example, suppose for transaction capability, there are no of services which perform different operations like, one service is getting the data from a bank of a particular user, one service is performing the transaction, one service is managing the transactions, etc. API and services collectively form digital banking functionality.
Different Types of APIs
In DBS, basically, there are three types of APIs, which are described below:
- Client APIs- The interface for a request which comes from outside (from Customer). It uses external JWT tokens. The request which backbase is getting from Customer is through client API only.
- Service APIs- The request which comes from inside. It uses internal JWT tokens. Capability to capability communication within DBS. Take an example, if you want to do any transaction, then transaction capability will contact Balance capability with the help of the Service APIs.
- Integration APIs- The service from DBS to outside. DBS to core banking services. As we saw in service API that transaction capability is contacting with balance capability to check balance. Here balance capability will connect to the Bank through the Integration APIs.
The above figure shows that IPS is interacting with DBS through the Client API (bringing the client’s request). Within DBS, one capability is interacting with others through Service API and DBS is interacting with core banking services (Bank) through the Integration API.
Customer Experience Services (CXS)
Customer Experience Services are essential non-backend banking service that enhances the customer experience. Experiences are the single points of entry for customers to use interactive applications. It can be customer care points, offers, etc.
Let’s see this through an example —
In the above picture, it is a diagram of the Net Banking site of a Bank, when we open the link, we can see that there are many options are present, like Calculators, Offers for you, Need Help, Advertisement, Query Box. So, these are the options that we are seeing on opening a banking page, are none other than Customer Experience Services (CXS). CXS enables us an interactive customer experience. These CXS services provides an interactive features to customers to give better customer experiences.
Conclusion —
This blog helps us to understand the basic overview of backbase and some knowledge about Services present in backbase.
Happy Learning!
