The situation
MID (Merchant ID) management underpinned how Bink matched card transactions to loyalty accounts - MIDs range from an entire retailer down to a single payment terminal, and onboarding them with Visa and Mastercard, then reconciling transaction data against them, ran through legacy, largely manual bulk-file processes. MIDs changed constantly as terminals were retired or reassigned, didn't always map cleanly between Visa and Mastercard, and the rise of SME payment platforms like SumUp - which pool many independent sub-merchants under a single MID - made accurate matching harder still. On top of that, for accuracy Bink allocated loyalty points only once a transaction had settled rather than when it was authorised, so points could take several days to appear even when the underlying merchant data was correct.
What I did
I took a stronger product lead on this while staying hands-on technically, setting up a task group to rethink the whole MID lifecycle - work that ultimately led to a patent application (GB2214520.5). Looking at the data showed that the overwhelming majority of authorised transactions went on to settle, so we redesigned the flow to act on authorisation immediately - applying loyalty points in a state that could be held or withdrawn if the later settlement never arrived - while reconciling against settlement in the background to protect accuracy. Alongside that, we built a proper MID management platform: bulk upload of retailer MID files with automatic sync to Visa and Mastercard, visibility into onboarding status and issues, and per-MID transaction insights that gave the team a much clearer read on partner locations and loyalty behaviour. At the core of the patent was a self-repairing data layer that used live transaction volume to detect stale MIDs - a retired terminal we still believed was active, for example - flag unexpected changes in volume, and automatically detect and onboard new MIDs as transactions began appearing against them, rather than waiting on manual retailer files.
The outcome
Combining authorisation-based allocation with self-repairing MID data moved loyalty points from a multi-day, settlement-dependent process to near-real-time, customer-visible allocation, without sacrificing accuracy. The MID management platform turned a previously manual, error-prone process into one the team could manage proactively - catching data issues before they affected customers rather than reacting after the fact - and the self-repair approach behind it was significant enough to form the basis of patent application GB2214520.5.