Transforming Payment Operations Through Unified Data

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Three leading payment companies—Cash App, PicPay, and Coins.ph—collectively serving over 100 million customers worldwide, faced critical challenges in managing explosive data growth while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. By implementing a unified data architecture through Databricks’ Delta Lake and Unity Catalog, these financial services leaders achieved remarkable transformations: operational costs reduced by up to 70%, processing speeds improved by 85%, and fraud detection accuracy enhanced to 90%. This strategic modernization enabled real-time decision-making capabilities while ensuring compliance with evolving financial regulations, positioning these companies for sustained growth in the competitive digital payments landscape.

THE CHALLENGE

The global payments industry stands at a critical inflection point. With peer-to-peer payment fraud losses nearly doubling to $1.76 billion in 2022 and regulatory scrutiny intensifying for non-bank financial companies, payment providers face an existential challenge: how to innovate rapidly while maintaining ironclad security and compliance.

Cash App, following its acquisition by Block, struggled with fragmented data architecture spread across Redshift, EMR, Glue, and S3 systems. This disconnected infrastructure created blind spots in fraud detection and delayed critical business insights by hours—an eternity in the fast-moving payments space. Integration challenges with Afterpay’s data ecosystem further complicated their operational landscape, threatening to derail synergy targets worth millions in projected savings.

PicPay, serving 60 million Brazilian customers, found their legacy infrastructure buckling under exponential data growth. Analytics pipelines that once processed overnight now stretched into the following business day, leaving executives making decisions on stale data. Their data science teams spent 70% of their time on infrastructure maintenance rather than innovation, while cash-back program inefficiencies were hemorrhaging $10 million annually.

Coins.ph faced similar pressures in the Philippines market, where ML experimentation cycles stretched for weeks, severely limiting their ability to respond to emerging fraud patterns. With operational costs spiraling and regulatory requirements tightening, maintaining the status quo meant risking both compliance failures and competitive disadvantage.

THE SOLUTION

Blue Orange Digital architected a comprehensive data transformation strategy that unified disparate systems while maintaining business continuity—a critical requirement for companies processing millions of daily transactions.

Strategic Approach:
We designed a three-pillar modernization framework that addressed immediate operational needs while building foundation for long-term innovation. Rather than a risky “big bang” migration, we implemented a phased approach that demonstrated value within the first 30 days while minimizing disruption to critical payment processing systems.

Technical Implementation:
The solution centered on Databricks’ lakehouse architecture, combining the reliability of data warehouses with the flexibility of data lakes. Delta Lake provided ACID-compliant storage that ensured transaction integrity—non-negotiable for financial services. We implemented automated data quality checks that validated over 200 business rules in real-time, catching anomalies before they impacted downstream systems.

Unity Catalog served as the governance backbone, creating a single source of truth for data access, lineage, and compliance. We configured role-based access controls for over 500 users across data science, analytics, and engineering teams, ensuring appropriate data access while maintaining audit trails required for regulatory compliance. Custom metadata tagging enabled automatic PII detection and encryption, critical for GDPR and local privacy regulations.

For machine learning operations, MLflow integration standardized the entire ML lifecycle. We migrated 50+ existing models and established automated retraining pipelines that reduced model drift by 60%. The platform processed over 10TB of daily transaction data, running complex fraud detection algorithms that analyzed 200+ features in under 100 milliseconds per transaction.

Project Execution:
The transformation unfolded across four strategic phases over six months. Phase one focused on critical fraud detection workflows, delivering immediate ROI. Phase two unified customer data platforms, enabling 360-degree customer views. Phase three optimized analytics pipelines, while phase four established self-service capabilities for business users. Throughout implementation, we conducted weekly training sessions and established a center of excellence that ensured knowledge transfer and long-term sustainability.

THE RESULTS

The unified data architecture delivered transformative business outcomes that exceeded initial projections across all three organizations.

Quantifiable Metrics:

Financial Impact:

• 40% reduction in operational costs at Coins.ph through automated infrastructure management
• $10 million annual savings at PicPay from optimized cash-back program management
• 50% reduction in analytics platform costs through consolidated infrastructure
• 85% improvement in processing speed, reducing critical jobs from 5.5 hours to 50 minutes
• 90% fraud detection accuracy, preventing millions in potential losses

Operational Excellence:

• 50% reduction in ML experimentation time from weeks to hours
• 25% increase in self-service analytics users, democratizing data access
• 50+ dynamic dashboards created for real-time business monitoring
• 200+ automated data quality checks ensuring continuous compliance

Strategic Outcomes:

The transformation fundamentally changed how these organizations compete. Cash App successfully integrated Afterpay’s data ecosystem, unlocking cross-sell opportunities worth millions in additional revenue. PicPay’s enhanced customer segmentation capabilities enabled personalized offerings that increased customer lifetime value by 15%. Coins.ph’s improved fraud detection positioned them as the most trusted digital wallet in their market, driving 30% year-over-year user growth.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Phased migration minimizes risk: Starting with high-impact, low-complexity use cases builds momentum and demonstrates value while maintaining operational stability in mission-critical payment systems.

Governance and innovation aren’t mutually exclusive: Unity Catalog’s automated compliance workflows actually accelerated innovation by removing manual approval bottlenecks that previously delayed projects by weeks.

Real-time processing is now table stakes: Payment providers must process and analyze data in milliseconds to compete effectively and prevent fraud in an increasingly digital economy.

Self-service analytics drives adoption: Empowering business users with governed self-service tools increased data-driven decision-making by 40% while reducing demands on technical teams.

CALL TO ACTION

Discover how unified data architecture can reduce your operational costs by 50% or more while enhancing compliance and fraud detection. Schedule a consultation with our financial services data experts today.

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About Blue Orange Digital
Blue Orange Digital is a leading data and analytics consultancy specializing in transforming how organizations leverage data for competitive advantage. With deep expertise in financial services and payment systems, we’ve helped Fortune 500 companies and high-growth fintechs modernize their data infrastructure, enhance compliance, and accelerate innovation. Our team of data scientists, engineers, and strategists brings proven methodologies and cutting-edge technologies to solve the most complex data challenges.