Building BankEase : An AI-Powered Open-Source Customer Experience Platform

Building BankEase:An AI-Powered Open-Source Customer Experience Platform, This 8-week collaborative innovation challenge aims to create an end-to-end AI banking platform that transforms customer experience while addressing the unique regulatory requirements of North American and EU markets. The solution will demonstrate how financial institutions can leverage cutting-edge AI technologies to deliver personalized, secure, and seamless banking experiences.

The problem

The banking sector across North America and the EU is experiencing unprecedented transformation driven by regulatory changes, technological innovation, and evolving customer expectations. Open Banking regulations, particularly PSD2 in Europe, have fundamentally altered how financial data is shared and accessed. According to recent studies, 88% of consumers now prefer online banking, with 59% favoring mobile apps and 29% preferring desktop browsers.

Despite these shifts, many financial institutions struggle to adapt, facing several critical challenges:

• Regional Regulatory Complexity: Financial institutions must navigate different regulatory environments-PSD2 and Open Banking in Europe require banks to share data through standardized APIs, while North American regulations vary by jurisdiction but increasingly focus on data security and consumer protection. This regulatory landscape creates both challenges and opportunities for innovation.

• Rising Customer Expectations : Today’s banking customers expect personalized, frictionless experiences across all channels. According to Zendesk’s CX Trends 2025 report, 72% of customers want immediate service, 70% expect anyone they interact with to have full context of their situation, and 62% think experiences should flow naturally between channels. Banks that fail to meet these expectations risk customer attrition, as 56% of consumers simply leave without complaining when they encounter poor experiences.

• Legacy System Limitations: Many established banks operate on outdated core systems, spending up to 70% of their IT budgets on maintaining legacy infrastructure rather than innovation. This technical debt severely limits their ability to compete with digital-first challengers and fintech disruptors.
• Personalization Gaps: Despite having vast amounts of customer data, many banks struggle to convert this into meaningful personalized experiences. According to the Global Banking Consumer Study 2025, banks in the top 20% for customer advocacy experience 1.7x faster revenue growth globally, highlighting the business impact of getting personalization right.

The goals

• Design a Compliant Open Banking Architecture: Develop a microservices-based platform that supports PSD2 and Open Banking requirements while maintaining flexibility for North American regulatory frameworks.
• Create a Hyper-Personalization Engine: Build an AI system that analyzes customer data to deliver tailored experiences, recommendations, and insights based on individual financial behaviors, preferences, and goals.
• Implement Omnichannel Experience Orchestration: Develop a system where mobile serves as the primary orchestrator of customer journeys that can seamlessly transition between digital and physical channels without losing context.
• Build Advanced Security and Fraud Prevention: Create AI models for proactive fraud detection and prevention that balance security with user experience, addressing regional compliance requirements.
• Develop Showcase-Ready Product: Deliver a functioning prototype with both frontend and backend components that can be demonstrated to potential banking clients across North America and EU markets.

Solution Components

The end-to-end AI banking platform will include the following key components:

Frontend Experience Layer

Mobile-First Design: Create a responsive mobile application that serves as the primary customer interface and journey orchestrator

Intelligent Virtual Assistant: Develop a conversational AI system capable of handling customer queries, executing transactions, and providing financial guidance

Phygital Integration Tools: Design interfaces for branch integration to support seamless transitions between digital and in-person banking

AI and Data Intelligence Core

Customer Insight Engine: Build advanced analytics capabilities to process customer data and generate actionable insights

Personalization Algorithms: Develop models that create tailored experiences and recommendations based on customer profiles, behavior patterns, and financial goals

Fraud Detection System: Implement real-time monitoring and anomaly detection to identify potential security threats

Backend Platform Architecture

Microservices Foundation: Design a microservices architecture that enables modular development and scalability

API Gateway: Create a robust API management layer that securely exposes banking services to third-party providers and internal systems

Service Mesh Layer: Develop a service orchestration layer that abstracts underlying systems and enables seamless integration

Regulatory Compliance Framework

PSD2/Open Banking Modules: Implement components specifically designed to meet European open banking requirements

Data Privacy Controls: Build privacy protection mechanisms compliant with GDPR in Europe and relevant regulations in North America

Audit and Reporting Tools: Create systems for regulatory reporting and compliance verification

Project Timeline

Week 1-2: Problem Definition and Architecture Design

•       Conduct market research on specific regional banking requirements
•       Define comprehensive user personas and journey maps for both markets
•       Design the technical architecture emphasizing microservices and API-first approach

Week 3-4: Data Engineering and Core AI Development

•       Develop data processing pipelines and anonymized training datasets
•       Build core AI models for personalization, conversation, and fraud detection
•       Implement API gateway and service mesh components

Week 5-6: Frontend Development and Integration

•       Create mobile and web interfaces with responsive design
•       Develop conversational AI components and virtual assistant
•       Integrate frontend and backend systems through API layer

Week 7: Testing and Regulatory Compliance

•       Conduct security testing and vulnerability assessments
•       Perform compliance checks against relevant regulatory frameworks
•       Optimize system performance and user experience

Week 8: Refinement and Showcase Preparation

•       Finalize product documentation and implementation guides
•       Prepare compelling demonstrations for potential banking clients
•       Create marketing materials highlighting regional benefits and use cases

Why join? The uniqueness of Omdena AI Innovation Challenges

A collaborative experience you never had in your working life! For the next eight weeks, you will build AI solutions to make a real-world impact and go through an entire data science project lifecycle. This covers problem scoping, data collection, and preparation, as well as modeling for deployment.

And the best part is that you will join a global and collaborative team of changemakers. Omdena AI Challenges are not a competition or hackathon but a real-world project that will take your experience of what is possible through collaboration to a new level.

Find more information on how an Omdena project works