Dozens: Putting spending insights on the map with Google Maps Platform and Snowdrop MRS

About Dozens

By boosting financial literacy and opening access to previously closed financial products, UK fintech Dozens makes saving easier and more rewarding. It offers a current account, smart budgeting and saving tools, and an investment manager, all in one app.

Industries: Financial Services & Insurance, Technology
Location: United Kingdom

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About Snowdrop Solutions

Snowdrop helps companies maximize Google Maps Platform and location intelligence with its tools and services and deploys innovative solutions for leading banks.

Dozens uses Google Maps Platform and Snowdrop’s Merchant Reconciliation System (MRS) in its financial app to visualize spending insights, reduce customer support calls, and improve fraud detection.

Google Maps Platform results

  • Enables growth of user base to over 40,000, with 100% growth over six months
  • Supports mission to extend fintech beyond urban millennials, with 65% now outside London and 35% over age 35
  • Allows Dozens cardholders to visualize spending all over the world, with Google Maps Platform and Snowdrop MRS functionality
  • Exceeds projected average balance targets in both customers’ current and savings accounts by building trust from day one

Cuts support costs by 90% with transaction validation

Most people take for granted being able to see restaurants, stores, and addresses on a map from inside the applications and websites they use every day. But what if they could also map all of their spending habits everywhere around the world? What if a financial app could help them save money by sharing exactly where they spend it? It’s these questions that the founders of Dozens set out to answer when they began working on a new kind of fintech startup in 2018.

While the fintech revolution has led to several specialized money management options, its very success means that people are now managing their money across multiple apps. Ironically, despite all this new technology, many users still rely on spreadsheets to see their complete financial picture. The Dozens app solves this problem by offering current accounts, budgeting and saving tools, and investment products all in one place.

Dozens’ advanced technology allows it to bring the entirety of a users’ financial lives into a single app. But the real innovation lies in Dozens’ business model that monetizes solely on customer savings and investments, rather than on lending. This means Dozens can promise customers that budgeting and saving are truly a shared goal. It also means the company is offering customers a fundamentally different value proposition.

Mapping personal financial insights with Google Maps Platform

One of the ways Dozens is making saving easier and more rewarding for its customers is by providing an in-depth understanding of how they spend money. In order to do this, the company integrates rich location data from Google Maps Platform into the app. This gives customers visibility into transaction location data and context for their spending, allowing them to not only understand their habits and trends, but also reduce anxiety around potential fraud and misuse of financial products. This transaction visibility helps validate spending for customers by easily mapping exactly where and when they spend money. Mapping also eliminates confusion about specific transactions, which may show up on credit card or bank statements with unfamiliar names or corporate addresses. The ability to visualize transactions on a map from within the Dozens app has drastically reduced customer service calls, driving down support costs by 90%, according to Snowdrop.

“As a new fintech, trust is a huge factor in how we gain and keep customers. Every millimeter of our app where we can build trust and show them something familiar is really valuable. I don't think there's another map platform that’s more familiar to consumers than Google Maps Platform.”

Eleanor Hasler, Vice President, Product Strategy and External Relations, Dozens

Spending visibility is made possible through Maps, Routes, and Places from Google Maps Platform. Static and dynamic maps, place details with basic and contact data, and geocoding give customers unprecedented insight into their spending behaviors. Dozens is also the first fintech in the UK to offer customers aggregate spending insights. This feature resulted from 300 alpha and beta users across the country, who requested analytics to help them understand when and where they tend to overspend.

“As a new fintech, trust is a huge factor in how we gain and keep customers,” says Eleanor Hasler, Vice President of Product Strategy and External Relations at Dozens. “Every millimeter of our app where we can build trust and show them something familiar is really valuable. I don't think there's another map platform that’s more familiar to consumers than Google Maps Platform.”

With the Dozens app, a customer’s purchase not only appears on a transaction list, it can also be drilled down into more detail. An expanded view shows the transaction code that corresponds to the customer receipt, the merchant information, and a map displaying exactly where the transaction took place. For a coffee purchased from a large chain or franchise, the transaction list might be labeled an unfamiliar vendor such as “Corporate Coffee, Inc.” A customer who doesn’t recognize this transaction can simply tap on it to pull up additional information and see the business on the map. Once the customer recognizes the familiar logo of the shop just around the corner from their office, the transaction is validated and the need to call customer support is eliminated.

Dozens users also enjoy different visual summaries of how they spend, including a heat map indicating when they spend. This gives insight into whether they spend more at different times of the day or different weeks of the month or year. At first, this feature was a static map displaying how much they spent in different neighborhoods or parts of the world. With dynamic maps, users can now zoom into locations and get aggregate data for any area they define. This enables insights on everything from holiday spending to which areas of their own city tend to lead them to overspend. With Google Maps Platform, Dozens is able to extend the basic location details for spending to become a way for users to save money.

Collaborating for innovation with a Google Maps Premier Partner

“Snowdrop Solutions stood out from day one because of our shared understanding of how to work together to innovate. The team is nimble in envisioning and creating things that haven't existed before. We've been thrilled with the partnership, and it’s yielding fruit from very early days.”

Eleanor Hasler, Vice President, Product Strategy and External Relations, Dozens

Dozens works with Snowdrop Solutions, a leading Google Maps Premier Partner in the UK, to improve customer confidence and any confusing transaction data. Snowdrop provides functionality for the app through integration with Snowdrop’s Merchant Reconciliation System (MRS). MRS works in the back end to take raw transaction data and return clean merchant names, logos, and location information, utilizing the Google Places database. Snowdrop’s MRS fosters a smooth user experience and removes customer anxiety while reducing costs to financial services providers.

“Snowdrop Solutions stood out from day one because of our shared understanding of how to work together to innovate,” says Eleanor. “The team is nimble in envisioning and creating things that haven't existed before. We've been thrilled with the partnership, and it’s yielding results from very early days.”

Charting new horizons with dynamic maps

Dynamic maps are a huge differentiator for Dozens, from both cost and user experience perspectives. Dozens and Snowdrop Solutions see the potential for leveraging dynamic maps to become a driver for online customer acquisition and fraud prevention in the near future. Dozens is excited to continue working with Google Maps Platform to go beyond user experience and cost reduction toward expanded features for customers.

“As a startup, we tend to view Google as one of the big corporates. There’s always the assumption that we can only get off-the-shelf solutions. But in reality, what we’ve found with Google Maps Platform is a huge amount of room for working together to create something new.”

Eleanor Hasler, Vice President, Product Strategy and External Relations, Dozens

Dozens is looking to grow its customer base beyond the already impressive 15,000 customers gained in the first seven months since launch. To meet its goals, the company needs to be able to bank on speed and trust. With Google Maps Platform, there's never a worry about whether the technology will scale to handle increased transaction volume. On top of this, the technology continues to delight users by not only bringing back to mind each transaction, but in many cases, pleasant memories too.

Dozens is exceeding its initial targets not only in terms of customer acquisition, but customer deposits. Average balances are the main KPI because that's where Dozens makes money and measures trust. The Dozens customer base doesn’t skew to just urban millennials looking for a fun new tech tool, but to all kinds of people who see it as a genuine long-term helper. Already, 35% of Dozens customers are above the age of 35, and 65% are outside of London.

“As a startup, we tend to view Google as one of the big corporates,” says Eleanor. “There’s always the assumption that we can only get off-the-shelf solutions. But in reality, what we find with Google Maps Platform is a huge amount of room for working together to create something new.”

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

Contact us

About Dozens

By boosting financial literacy and opening access to previously closed financial products, UK fintech Dozens makes saving easier and more rewarding. It offers a current account, smart budgeting and saving tools, and an investment manager, all in one app.

Industries: Financial Services & Insurance, Technology
Location: United Kingdom

About Snowdrop Solutions

Snowdrop helps companies maximize Google Maps Platform and location intelligence with its tools and services and deploys innovative solutions for leading banks.