With the surging digital wave of the financial industry in recent years, new technologies represented by big data, cloud computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, etc. are reshaping and promoting the depth of digital transformation in various financial segments.

Digital transformation has rooted deep in the credit card field

As the banking business sector with the most profound digital genes and innovative capabilities, bank’s credit card business making full use of the rich accumulated customer data, data-driven decision-making and refined operations have become mainstream, adopting digital initiatives ranging from core refresh to iterative upgrade of their applications. Digitization has penetrated into all aspects of the credit card business especially in terms of smart risk control.

Credit cards was very sought after due to its flexibilities and advantages associated with the consumption habits of consumers that are advancing with times. Due to the trend of contactless payments in the post-Covid era, credit cards have slowly become the "weapon" for retail transformation of various financial institutions. This is shown by the accelerated introduction of digital credit cards by both large state-owned banks and joint-stock banks since 2020 as well as the digitization of the entire supply chain including card issuance, management and security applications.

In August 31, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Construction Bank, Bank of Communications, Postal Savings Bank, China CITIC Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and others have jointly launched an innovative digital UnionPay Unbounded Card and in September 25, China CITIC Bank, China UnionPay and Huawei Wallet jointly launched a special digital bank card.

Digital credit cards have undoubtedly becoming a new trend in payment

New challenges of credit card core system

While major banks are seizing new heights for the development of digital credit cards, the technological changes surrounding digital credit card initiatives are becoming more imminent. Hence, the refresh of the credit card core system, the "heart" of the overall credit card business is the essence in providing non- stop services to cardholders.

The prevalence of digital credit cards poses new challenges to the banks’ credit card core system at different levels:

-    Architectural level

An enterprise-level microservices and distributed technology architecture can greatly improve the reusability of functional modules and increase the speed of docking. Field segmentation is performed on the basis of maintaining stability and efficiency with the support of loose coupling between fields, easy expansion within the field as well as enabling centralized parameter management and operations.

-   Business level

A service-oriented system that provides support based on business areas rather than software system structure that focuses on users with the improved customer insights and providing services based on user journey. Product pricing is refined to the scenario level, marketing activities are differentiated according to different dimensions and services are refined through smart risk management and control capabilities. The componentized and configurable business strategies, product factories can quickly release new products. Large operating platforms support full-platform operations and flexible deployment of business resources enable services available 24x7.

-   Data level

Through data-driven business processes, real-time data is used to support decision-making at all levels and achieve real-time decision-making. Customer segmentation based on digital insights promote and increase the scale of interest-bearing assets while event-driven streaming services provide multiple customer services via a single touch. Operation and maintenance monitoring and operation data actively reveal operation hotspots, allowing administrators at all levels to understand the front-line situation in real time, allowing decision making and resources allocation efficiently.

The ability of the credit card business to achieve smooth operation depends greatly on the “vitality and health” of the credit card core.

Sunline pioneers the credit card core refresh

As a service provider focusing on the core banking field for nearly two decades, Sunline has opened up new horizons for the credit card core system with innovative technologies and service models, reshaping the traditional financial ecosystem.

With a professional implementation team and rich practical experiences, Sunline has become the preferred core credit card service provider for many major domestic banks in China. In the credit card core refresh project for Bank of Communications, Sunline was responsible for the construction of the system architecture design, authorization processing, card issuance and real-time reduction of the core. Apart from that, Sunline has also created the industry credit card core benchmark projects for China CITIC Bank and Ping An Bank.

Aiming at the new trends of digital credit cards, Sunline's credit card core system is based on the design concept of data-driven and domain separation with advanced features:

1. Distributed microservice design based on enterprise-level architecture, modularized business capabilities, configuration deployment and online services.

2. Business processing abstraction according to logical units with processing flow and path determined by the data itself with the routing rules supporting the configuration of the rule engine.

3. The batch business process can be restructured based on requirements.

4. The unitized architecture supports gray release, A/B testing for business decision-making of homogeneous customer groups as well as business optimization and iteration.

5. The operation module, parameter module and business capability module are separated with independent role and authority system. Operation page is separated from the business logic and unified management of the operation platform is supported.

6. Integrated design of credit card and credit to support multi-format integration.

As the major banks in China are accelerating their efforts to transform to retail finance, the credit card business being the top priority of retail business will inevitably gain a growth rate that surpasses other financial businesses. Hence, credit card core system will inevitably enter a new round of upgrading and transformation cycle.

With the opportunities arising in the digital age, Sunline has always adhered to innovation and professionalism in exploring new paths for financial technology to empower business development and developing a digital financial ecosystem with the power of China's financial technology.