Fusion Smart Biller FFDC App - Saving on Bill Payments - AI

Alternate Biller Recommendations - Save on Bills
Innovation in Bill Payments and Biller Charges
Solution Architecture
FFDC API Usage - Bill Payments and Account Information API

Inspiration

The innovation scope in Utility Bill Payments domain and the fact we have FFDC APIs for bill payments through our core retail banking products. Biller companies have earned huge profits for many years from customers who don’t examine their payments or search for better biller options or negotiate their bills and end up paying hefty convenience charges. AI can help end consumer save their money on bill payments by analyzing better offers on bill payment charges imposed by biller companies. What if you are paying your monthly electricity bill with your registered biller and there comes recommendations in your bill payments app to negotiate with other billers who imposes less charges on the similar bill and ultimately saves on your bill payment?

What it does

Fusion Smart Biller is an innovation in Bill Payments which suggest alternate biller options with reduced biller charges while you are paying your utility bills. It uses the biller companies information, biller charges available in Finastra's retail banking products through FFDC Open APIs and applies AI to derive possibility of an alternate biller which could provide reduced charges and savings on the same bill. It uses FFDC APIs to forecast the savings in bill amount for each biller recommendations.

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Data scarcity was the major challenge i.e. to collate and simulate an actual banking data set to train the model to improve the accuracy of the training data required for the AI algorithm to predict alternate biller and reduced charges recommendations. But as and when the usage of Bill Payments API and Biller registrations in FFDC eco system grows, data will add up and enhance the training model for more relevant and accurate recommendations on alternate biller options

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building and developing an end-to-end prototype using FFDC APIs and innovating with AI on top of these Open APIs was a major accomplishment for our team. We could showcase the innovation that could be done on top of retail banking Open APIs in FFDC when features like "Utility Bill Payments" are exposed as APIs and combining them with account and transactions from core product. This app can also generate a possible commission based revenue model by proving options for customers to "Switch Biller" based on alternate biller recommendations

What we learned

Innovating through Open APIs exposed over retail banking features (in this case, its utility bill payments) can be done using Finastra's FFDC platform. We also learnt how to combine core product data with Azure AI and derive AI based savings

What's next for Fusion Smart Biller Idea

Switch Biller concept - Possible revenue model, where customers can switch to alternate billers who are provider lesser charges on similar utility bill payments. Integrate this with FFDC Payments Open API and generate a commission model on switching billers for customers