European digital bank Advanzia today announces its partnership with digital banking technology provider Backbase, a collaboration that will allow Advanzia to drive digital transformation and optimise customer experience. The long-term partnership includes the implementation of Backbase-as-a-Service (Baas) – a cloud solution that enables banks to develop and release new digital services. By using a holistic platform approach, Advanzia benefits from increased speed of innovation and the ability to build new solutions once and deploy repeatedly.

The collaboration with Backbase and the new app launches form a key part of Advanzia’s omni-channel growth strategy, marking a significant milestone towards its goal of implementing a customer-centric, digital UX platform – covering the complete lifecycle of a cardholder with frictionless integration of all touchpoints. Advanzia’s strategy also includes the harmonisation of all underlying business processes, enhanced data management and service partner integration. This provides the foundation to design and create mobile and web-based solutions through unified APIs.

Roland Ludwig, CEO of Advanzia comments: “By introducing these digital, omni-channel solutions, Advanzia is transforming the entire enterprise platform into a state-of-the-art, holistic digital banking platform. The partnership with Backbase allows us to offer our customers a seamless experience across all touchpoints, spanning every product and every market we operate in. This will not only completely transform the customer experience, but will also provide us with the necessary technology and capabilities to respond quickly to future growth opportunities.”

So far, three brand new mobile apps have gone live for Advanzia’s credit card customers in France (carte ZERO), Austria (free Mastercard Gold) and Spain (Tarjeta YOU), offering real-time transaction and available balance overview, monthly billing statements, strong customer authentication (SCA/PSD2 compliant), in-app validation of online transactions and biometric login using face ID and fingerprint. A range of additional functionalities and self-service features aimed at facilitating better customer communications and improving how cardholders manage their credit card activities will be launched on a regular basis.

Jouk Pleiter, CEO of Backbase adds: “We’re thrilled to be helping Advanzia on their digital journey, and to be helping them create a future roadmap so they can scale quickly and elevate the experience of their growing customer base. Our platform has given Advanzia the ability to build a single concept for a brand new app and then deploy it consistently across multiple markets, all while adapting to each specific set of local requirements. Our cloud based platform empowers banks to shift their focus to business value, so they can focus on responding to market needs and matching the expectations of digital-savvy consumers by delivering new services faster than ever.”