mx51 to use Snowflake for analytics and customer service

Snowflake has been selected by merchant payment platform mx51 to support its analytics and customer service.

Australian-based mx51 provides a suite of white-label services to banks and financial institutions, allowing them to offer in-store, phone, and online payment capabilities.

"When we first established in 2019, our small team relied on little more than a series of relational databases to store data generated by our microservices," says mx51 chief product officer, Steven Hadley.

"However, as data volumes grew, it became clear a different approach was required.

"Back then, a key driver for us was needing a better way to run queries. Before Snowflake, if you wanted to run queries across multiple databases, there was no easy way to do this."

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

"At the end of the day, it became clear Snowflake was the best fit for our requirements," says Hadley.

"We were particularly impressed with its ability to scale and integrate with our front-end tools."

The company says deployment began with an initial proof-of-concept, involving data extraction from several Postgres databases and providing answers to relatively simple user queries. Once it became clear the approach worked, additional data was added, and user numbers quickly grew.

Hadley says Snowflake now underpins their entire business intelligence efforts.

"It's used by everyone from our product team to finance and senior management, who use it to assist in strategic planning," he says.

"It allows queries to be quickly answered and provides a clear picture of what's going on within our customer's payments infrastructures."

Snowflake is also used by the mx51 support team to resolve merchant issues. For example, if a retailer is experiencing problems with a terminal, data from the machine can be quickly accessed and analysed to determine the best resolution.

"It allows us to provide proactive support for our customer's customers," says Hadley.

"If a problem's 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.

"I'm confident we now have in place a data platform that will grow with and support us for many years to come," he says.

"It also enables us to gain insights and use BI tools in ways that previously wouldn't have been possible."