Use Cases

Payment Processing

Hazelcast in-memory solutions modernize payment processing, accelerate bank and merchant performance, and improve customer experience.

Speed, scalability, stability, and security across the entire payments process ecosystem.

Payment processing systems allow businesses to take payments for goods and services using credit cards, debit cards, and checks. These systems check the details received during the transaction by forwarding them to the respective card’s issuing bank or association for verification. During this process, the sponsoring organization will carry out a series of anti-fraud measures before settling the transaction. All of these payment process steps must happen before the transaction can be cleared (that is, while the customer is waiting). With 24/7 global operations and hard SLAs, stability and automatic recovery are a must-have since each step in the payment processing pipeline requires the lowest possible latency. Hazelcast delivers the ideal technology for payment processing systems, as it offers the lowest end-to-end processing latencies consistently. This is the result of combining data processing and messaging in a single solution with elastically scalable storage for caching data from 3rd-party systems.

Speed

Hazelcast is designed for low latency under heavy workloads, with no noticeable delays even at 5 million aggregations per second.

Scalability

Hazelcast is designed for today's always-on, high-streaming workloads, and can be scaled easily due to its parallel, distributed computing core.

Stability

Hazelcast Jet and IMDG provide a distributed streaming and in-memory processing capability in an integrated solution across a variety of deployment models, simplifying implementation and maintenance while lowering TCO.

Security

The ability to run multiple fraud detection algorithms in the time it takes to swipe a card keeps your customer and merchant transactions more secure, with no noticeable delay in processing speeds.

Payment Processing Reference Architecture

Hazelcast can be a fast, scalable, resilient, and secure foundation of your payment processing architecture, especially in the payment hub services component. Hazelcast can power the components described below.

Hazelcast can be a fast, scalable, resilient, and secure foundation of your payment processing architecture, especially in the payment hub services component. Hazelcast can power the components described below.

Payment Hub

The payment hub is responsible for three primary decisions:

  • Authentication
  • Fraud detection
  • Network selection

Authentication. Payment authentication entails checking details of the transaction to ensure valid data was provided. Hazelcast can quickly check rules to authenticate the transaction.
Fraud detection. Fraud detection entails checking against a large set of rules, or even a machine learning model, to make a prediction on whether the transaction is fraudulent or not.
The Hazelcast speed advantage lets you create a competitive advantage by running more complex algorithms simultaneously within your stringent SLAs. This lets you more effectively reduce the risk of fraud while minimizing the likelihood of false positives.
Network selection. For network selection, the payment hub identifies the most cost-effective network choice for a given SLA time. Hazelcast can determine this at near real-time speeds based on information and rules stored in-memory.

Gateway

The payment gateway is a set of connectors to different networks. It understands the varied protocols and data formats across existing networks. Hazelcast provides a connector API for creating customer interfaces to deliver transactions to the broad range of networks that are available today.

Operational Data Store

The operational data store (ODS) stores all the information necessary to authorize and deliver transactions. This includes cardholder information, fraud detection model data, historical transaction history, payment gateway information, etc. Hazelcast stores all of this in-memory to enable the highest throughput of transactions with the lowest latency.

Check out our Hazelcast Payment Processing Reference Architecture white paper.

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Card Payment Use Cases

Hazelcast has been deployed in every component in the card payment processing ecosystem.

Payment processors are the first point of contact for most merchants in the card payment lifecycle, and gateways are the channels for secure data transmission. Firms often handle both functions for merchants. Processors and gateways use Hazelcast for:

  • Authentication and fraud detection
  • Real-time reporting for systems monitoring
  • Geo-distribution

Read the Credorax Case Study

Acquiring banks (or simply “acquirers”) manage bank accounts on behalf of the merchants to collect money from purchase transactions. Acquirers use Hazelcast for:

  • Transaction monitoring
  • Advanced anti-fraud protection
  • Business intelligence services

Credit card networks are the overall coordinators of purchase transactions of their brand of credit cards. They work with all stakeholders to make sure funds are properly passed from the consumer to the merchant. Credit card networks use Hazelcast for:

  • Authentication and fraud detection
  • Payment messaging

Issuing banks are the consumer-facing firms that manage accounts on behalf of credit card holders. They are responsible for delivering money to the acquirers through the credit card networks. Issuing banks use Hazelcast for:

  • Card authentication/authorization
  • Fraud detection/prevention
  • Payment network selection

Instant Payment Use Cases

Hazelcast is used to speed up instant payment transactions, which are often plagued by cross-border incompatibilities. Interfaces tend to add bloat that slows down the transactions, and Hazelcast provides in-memory data access speeds to make payments truly instant.

The complexity of cross-border transactions represents the next major challenge for instant payments.

The complexity of cross-border transactions represents the next major challenge for instant payments.

Hazelcast can accelerate the various components in an instant payment lifecycle.

Hazelcast can accelerate the various components in an instant payment lifecycle.

Hazelcast can be used by banks to handle many aspects of processing payment transactions. With in-memory speeds, real-time stream processing, scale, resilience, and security, banks can deploy systems that speed up transactions while retaining much of the existing core banking infrastructure.

Hazelcast can be used by banks to handle many aspects of processing payment transactions. With in-memory speeds, real-time stream processing, scale, resilience, and security, banks can deploy systems that speed up transactions while retaining much of the existing core banking infrastructure.

As countries are looking to expand their instant payment ecosystems to include fast payments to international payees, payment network providers are providing the integration points to simplify the connectivity between countries. The use of in-memory and stream processing capabilities in Hazelcast can boost throughput and reduce latency to keep up with the load and the immediacy demands in today’s digital world.

Drive increased satisfaction across your payment processing ecosystem.

Keep everyone happy

Happy customers = happy merchants = happy payment processors. The right technology applied to the right process can add value across the entire supply chain.

Solutions that adjust to your needs

Scale up when needed, and down when not. Avoid over-capacity charges or (worse) struggling to keep up with demand.

Works with your existing infrastructure

Hazelcast in-memory solutions for stream processing and data grid applications are designed to work with your existing IT infrastructure, breathing new life into legacy systems.

10s of 1000s
Payments per second
Across multiple payment types, devices, and networks

Security at Speed
10K TPS w/SSL/TLS 1.2 w/Open SSL
Remove friction from the customer’s journey with no compromise

Related Resources

White Paper

Fraud Detection in Payment Processing

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Fraud has become a significant problem across the global payments ecosystem. Regardless of whether you’re a bank, payment processor, card provider, merchant, etc. the impact of fraud is widespread, with broader and deeper consequences as the underlying technology continues to evolve. In this whitepaper, Hazelcast walks through the cause and effect of digital fraud, and how in-memory technology is poised to address this challenge directly. Learn how the Hazelcast in-memory computing platform provides the high-performance environment that payment processors will need to fulfill the market’s needs today and into the future.
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