Secrets in Your Debit Data

Let’s face it, data and analytics are valuable pieces of the puzzle when it comes to maximizing profitability from your payments business. But that same wealth of information can become overwhelming if you don’t know how to interpret it or, more importantly, how to put it to use.

McKinsey & Company Partner Amit Garg and others make the case in "Analytics in banking: Time to realize the value” that data and analytics can and should become a true business discipline for financial institutions. While most institutions understand the potential power of the information that passes through their systems, harnessing that power can seem overwhelming.

This is exactly why PULSE provides Debit Dashboard^® to participants – so you can harness the power of your transaction and interchange data. Easy to navigate and easy to understand, the dashboard gives you the power to understand your cardholders' transactions to make sound business decisions based on real and accurate analytics. If you’re not already benefiting from this powerful tool, this is a great opportunity to start.

No sign up, no integration. It's already active and ready to go! Just log in to the PULSE website and selct PULSE Debit Dashboard under My Applications.

Intuitive Tool

The Debit Dashboard is an interactive tool that gives you the opportunity to look across multiple customer segments, analyze your institution’s PULSE transaction metrics and identify spending trends in your cardholder base. With the ability to benchmark your transactions against industry peers, you’ll see how your program is performing.

PULSE participants using Debit Dashboard say the data and analytics they get from the tool drives them to make their program more competitive, drives more profitable customer behavior while strengthening relationships and builds customer loyalty.

"The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the data in the Dashboard is how easy it is to access spend activity at the merchant level, and I mean right down to which grocery stores or which gas stations our customers are going to,” said Ben Benack, Vice President of Marketing for Dollar Bank. "This is a whole new insight into the behavior of our customers that’s really relevant.”

Data at Your Fingertips

Debit Dashboard users are able to get a deep dive into the data associated with their interchange, transactions and authorizations. Dollar values, average ticket size and ATM activity are also available data analytics you can view at no charge as part of your PULSE participation.

The default data view is for all BINs, but data can be separated by specific BINs and ranges to analyze revenue, expense and cardholder activity. Debit Dashboard provides financial and transactional overviews and gives you the ability to expand or collapse categories so you can explore upwards of one thousand attributes. That enables you to choose the right depth for your analysis.

You can view activity for:

PULSE PAY®

PIN Point of Sale, PINless Bill Pay, E-commerce and Internet PIN Debit

PULSE PAY® Express (PINless POS)

PULSE ATM

Issuer, Acquirer and PULSE Select®

PULSE Debit Solutions

Gateway POS and ATM

Discover® Debit

Opportunity Found

Each of these datasets can be broken down by activity, merchant category code, top merchants and market performance, with the ability to compare performance and your portfolio with peer financial institutions. You’ll also be able to track trending information and make monthly or annual data comparisons which can help you forecast growth, identify opportunities and make better-informed business decisions.

Ultimately, the Debit Dashboard reveals the best opportunities for portfolio improvement. For a regional bank, this could be reaching out to a high-volume merchant to partner on a promotion or business opportunity, or to develop a better understanding of how cardholders use their debit cards to create a target demographic for marketing efforts.

The McKinsey & Company analysi s describes how data analytics can help financial institutions accelerate growth, enhance productivity, improve risk control, enhance customer experience and discover new sources of growth.

"The ability that we have now to look at customer behavior as it relates to PIN debit already has us looking at new product and pricing strategies that will help us capitalize on those behaviors,” said Benack.

At PULSE, we’re focused on what’s right for you, and we collectively benefit when you have a thriving, profitable debit program. Debit Dashboard is one of many tools PULSE has designed to put more control in the hands of our issuers.