Toqio and Gradiant transform fintech data with AEI support

Toqio, a leading fintech platform, has partnered with Gradiant, a cutting-edge technology center, on an innovative project supported by the Agencia estatal de Investigación (AEI), a Spanish funding agency responsible for the promotion of scientific and technical research in different fields. This public/private collaboration project aims to redefine data management and analytics within the fintech sector, addressing critical challenges such as real-time data processing, seamless integration, and actionable insights for businesses.

With AEI's support, the project leverages Gradiant's expertise in data processing and artificial intelligence, combined with Toqio's industry-leading fintech platform, to create advanced solutions like our data lake, a central repository where we can store structured and unstructured information at any scale. This initiative empowers companies to securely integrate diverse data sources, enabling smarter decision-making, enhanced scalability, and improved user experiences across financial products. Together, Toqio and Gradiant are driving innovation to shape the future of fintech.

Learn more about this project with Rodrigo Iglesias, Founding Member and Director of Product Research & Innovation at Toqio:

1. What is Toqio's approach to data security, and what external expertise has supported the enhancement of these practices?

Security is the utmost priority to Toqio: defining and implementing a security layer, processes, and protocols is the foundation of every initiative we undertake. With AEI's support, we've partnered with Gradiant to enhance our data management and security capabilities, integrating an end-to-end protocol to monitor data quality streams as part of our mission to redefine fintech data processes.

These streams are composed of, apart from standarization among IN/OUT fields, a rule manager that requires each field value to accomplish with definitions. Every time an inconsistency is detected, the workflow triggers a number of alerts, for different actors that evaluate the problem and act consequently to resolve the issue. However, this does not break the data stream and only the non-compliant records are "banned" into the destination of the stream.

The above can sound a bit too technical, but thanks to Gradiant's support and expertise this has been materialized in a form that is very valuable from a business point of view; let's think of a Salesforce data origin where a field creation_date is mapped to the erp_merchant_creation_date field in Toqio. This is expected to be a mandatory field, with a predefined date format. During the reception of the data, legacy values in the data original storage system, Salesforce in this case, has a date format that is not allowed. Then, this specific record is not received and a full report of the inconsistency is sent to the destination our customer defines via e-mail, Slack, Teams, or any other preferred channel.

2. How does open innovation contribute to Toqio’s growth and adaptability within the fintech space?

At Toqio, together with Gradiant on this specific project, we are always looking for data tools and services that match our business goals and technical requirements. When it makes sense, we incorporate the above to our stack but, at the same time, we contribute to the community by making our developments open and public, when they do not compromise our security procedures and protocols, of course.

With the data initiative we are currently running with Gradiant, we will be releasing two repositories publicly, one containing anonymized financial data sets and a separate repository containing a set of useful scripts to build Kestra connectors.

3. Could you describe a typical R&D process in collaboration with partners, and what advantages does this approach bring?

Over the last few years, a high number of Spanish and European Union public institutions have released grants and financial support to run R&D projects. Under the umbrella of these projects we have been able to develop some of the top notch technologies we have released during the last years, accompanied by Gradiant quite frequently. 

The process starts with the analysis of a problem we have detected in the market. Then, while coming up with possible solutions, we reach technology leaders and confident voices, as part of our benchmarking. Part of these stakeholders is Gradiant. Then, when we know what we can do to solve a problem, we work together on finding ways to fund the development.

4. How has Toqio Analytics evolved over the course of this partnership? 

Toqio analytics has evolved from a mirror relational database backing up the business intelligence tools we use and we provide our customers with to a data stream where a corporate can bring in data owned by them into Toqio’s data lake and automatically create business intelligence by combining their data sources with Toqio’s financial information.

5. Could you highlight any new analytics features or capabilities that have resulted from this collaboration?

Thanks to our collaboration with Gradiant we have been able to develop what I have briefly described in the previous question. In terms of components of the flow, the data lake model allows our customers to map their data sources into a Toqio standard interface, which is automatically brought into BI tools. By creating a pipeline of data, corporations can merge and link different sources of data to make more informed decisions with zero- to low-impact development efforts.

6. What are some key benefits of the data lake initiative for Toqio’s partners and customers?

Great question! One of the key benefits for Toqio’s partners and customers is that they can securely bring external data into Toqio’s data lake, thanks in great part to Gradiant’s expertise in data integration and quality. So, what does this mean in practice? It allows them to pull data from different systems like marketing, CRM, or ERP tools into one central place. By combining this data with financial information from Toqio, they can get a unified dashboard that helps them make more informed, data-driven decisions. This setup not only simplifies data management but also opens up new opportunities for insights.

For instance, a customer using Toqio to offer physical and virtual cards to end users could mix financial data from Toqio with client data from their CRM to create targeted marketing campaigns. They could even segment users based on spending patterns or other behaviors, helping them engage more effectively and make strategic decisions with a clearer picture of their audience.

7. What role has external expertise played in building a data infrastructure that enables real-time insights?

Gradiant has extensive experience in data repositories, as they are focused on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. Toqio’s expertise is focused on fintech and, despite having internal data experts, Gradiant brings innovation and general knowledge beyond financial information.

They give us, then, a clean interface for the work we do together with vast experience in data, ML, and AI technologies.

8. Could you explain how these real-time insights enhance Toqio’s service offerings and support data-driven decision-making for users? 

Absolutely. Real-time insights are a game-changer for Toqio’s service offerings because they allow our customers to make decisions based on the most current data available. With Gradiant’s support in building our data infrastructure, we’re going to be able to offer customers up-to-the-minute information, so they can spot trends, monitor key metrics, and respond to issues or opportunities as they happen, rather than waiting for end-of-day or weekly reports.

They can even set up customized real-time alerts. For example, a customer could create an alert for sudden increases in card transactions and cross-reference it with CRM data to see if this behavior aligns with a specific marketing campaign, seasonal trends, or other factors.