Transforming Financial Services with Modern Observability: Moov's Story 

Challenge

As a new company poised to transform the financial services industry with its modern money movement platform, Moov wanted an equally modern observability platform as part of the company’s operational tech stack. 

With Moov's platform hosted in Google Cloud, it uses a diverse range of technologies to allow clients to accept, store, send, and spend money. The integration of numerous software providers further amplifies the complexity of each transaction. "Ensuring we can meticulously track each step of the money movement transaction is paramount for our operations. Finding the perfect observability partner was essential to our business," said Joel Tosi, CTO at Moov.

Solution

Moov initiated a vendor evaluation process with a primary focus on identifying a platform capable of managing high-cardinality data with the ability to trace down to a single request. "I assessed multiple vendors to gauge their cardinality limits and quickly narrowed down to a single vendor: Honeycomb," remarked JJ Philipp, Senior Software Architect at Moov.

"Honeycomb's thought leadership aligned perfectly with our ethos, and we identified them as an ideal match from an engineering culture standpoint," shared Joel, adding, "I firmly believe in the principle that a product should excel at one thing, and Honeycomb exemplifies that. Also, their sales approach focused on value creation and understanding our needs, and then they made sure that value was delivered."

Moov's decision to partner with Honeycomb was driven by several key factors:

• Leading solution for high-cardinality data support, enabling detailed transaction analysis
• Cultural alignment with Honeycomb's thought leadership on observability for engineering
• Support for OpenTelemetry that seamlessly collects, generates, and exports Moov's telemetry data
• Exceptional sales process focused on understanding Moov's needs and ensuring value creation was delivered

Results

Rapid deployment and easy user onboarding

Moov experienced a seamless transition with the deployment of Honeycomb's cloud-native observability platform, achieving implementation in a matter of days. The simplicity of the solution facilitated the onboarding of diverse user groups, spanning technical and non-technical backgrounds. Currently supporting a range of use cases for engineering, product, and risk/fraud teams, Honeycomb's user-friendly interface and intuitive features have streamlined operations across departments. 

“Honeycomb has made it effortless for users across departments to create custom dashboards and craft tailored queries, allowing them to extract actionable insights with ease. Honeycomb has also been instrumental in helping us to foster collaboration across teams, enabling everyone to work cohesively with access to the same dataset,” Joel shared.

On the topic of the solution’s simplicity, JJ added, "Honeycomb's usability is really the biggest killer feature. Users don't have to ask how to read the logs; they figure it out themselves. And for the engineers, they gain the confidence of knowing the system services they manage work as intended."

Rich observability that expedites debugging and enables just-in-time deployments 

Equipped with deep visibility into the Moov system, the engineering team's first big win was addressing known issues head-on. Utilizing Honeycomb spans and traces, the engineering team meticulously identified areas where the platform wasn’t performing as expected. "Honeycomb was instrumental in helping us pinpoint system issues, serving as our go-to tool for debugging and identifying the required fix. Once we started making changes, Honeycomb was the exact same tool we’d use to make sure the change worked correctly,” explained Joel.

With the major platform improvements in place, the engineering team turned to Honeycomb for ongoing detection of any anomalies in the Moov system. "Honeycomb helps us quickly find the needle in the haystack, pinpointing where the issue lies. We can then dig into the problem and understand what's actually happening,” said Joel. 

High-cardinality data support was a pivotal factor in Moov's vendor selection process, and Honeycomb has surpassed expectations in delivering on this critical requirement. With each transaction within the Moov system containing a wealth of unique data, Honeycomb's high-cardinality support provides engineers with the visibility to track every step of a transaction in real-time from its inception to downstream processes.

"As processors of financial transactions, our customers expect a flawless experience. We rely on Honeycomb's high-cardinality support to uphold our commitment to customers and promptly address any issues that may arise. It's like having a shortcut because the high-cardinality data is structured in a way that allows us to see the end-to-end transaction.”

Furthermore, Honeycomb's insights have streamlined deployment processes, enabling engineering to launch updates confidently in the production environment. This newfound efficiency not only ensures that Moov can innovate rapidly but also enhances the team's quality of life by significantly reducing the need for overnight deployments. "Honeycomb's granular insights have improved our ability to do just-in-time software deployments, instilling confidence and improving overall team satisfaction," remarked Joel.

Reflecting on Moov’s cost and time savings, Joel explained, “Honeycomb has really optimized our engineering resources. Without it, I’d have to hire 30 more full-time engineers just to triage, build new capabilities, and maintain a deeper bench strength.”

Proactive application performance monitoring

The product team relies heavily on Honeycomb to help Moov uphold the highest standards of customer experience. Leveraging a comprehensive array of custom dashboards, the team gains a macro-level view of application performance, enabling them to swiftly identify and address emerging issues before they impact clients. Using Honeycomb triggers integrated with Slack, the team receives early alerts about potential performance issues, allowing for immediate escalation to engineers for triage and troubleshooting.

"Honeycomb is the product team’s go-to tool for proactively monitoring customer experience. With its custom dashboards and early alerting capabilities, we can identify and address performance issues before they affect our customers, ensuring top-notch service delivery."

Risk and fraud team protecting Moov’s monetary interests

The risk and fraud team at Moov relies on Honeycomb as a critical tool in protecting the company's financial interests. With the capability to detect high-risk transactions, Honeycomb provides early indicators of any suspicious activity that could pose a fraud risk to Moov. For instance, Honeycomb triggers Slack alerts to notify the team of sudden spikes in money movement that are indicators of potential account takeover and unauthorized card usage. Given the high sensitivity of the fraud team to such anomalies, Honeycomb's early detection capabilities play a crucial role in minimizing potential risks of fraud loss.

“Honeycomb has proven to be invaluable in our efforts to safeguard Moov from fraud risk. Its early detection capabilities provide us with vital insights into potentially fraudulent activities, allowing us to take swift action to mitigate risks and protect our company,” explained Joel.

Gaining a quality partnership with Honeycomb

Moov's collaboration with Honeycomb transcends the typical vendor-customer relationship, evolving into a strong partnership. As Joel aptly puts it, "Honeycomb is passionate about what they're doing and cares about their customers. They take the time to build relationships, and all of that matters. It's not just about being a vendor-client, it's very much about a partnership." 

This sentiment is echoed by the team's reliance on Honeycomb, as Joel emphasizes: "We can't live without Honeycomb because we need observability. It makes our lives easier, improves the quality of our deployments, and ensures we can sleep better at night." Indeed, Honeycomb's commitment to client satisfaction and unwavering support has solidified its position as an indispensable ally in Moov's journey towards success.

Interested in learning more? Book a consultation with our sales team.

At a glance

About

Moov is a U.S.-based financial services company that orchestrates the entire money movement story from start to finish, giving software companies visibility and control over the whole experience. With its modern money movement platform, Moov offers a simple, powerful, and scalable way to integrate payments into products. Moov is uniquely a payment Processor, issuer, registered PayFac, program manager, and technology provider, making it an all-in-one payment solution for businesses that want to facilitate complex money movement quickly and securely.

Industry

Financial services

Products

Honeycomb platform

Use cases
DevOps and debugging

Application performance monitoring

Fraud and risk management

Results

• Deployed in days, accelerating operational readiness
• Gained modern observability tool that expedites debugging and enables just-in-time deployments
• Saved hiring 30 FTEs with Honeycomb's observability insights and efficiency gains
• Improved customer experience by proactively monitoring and addressing potential issues
• Gained early detection of potentially fraudulent transactions, mitigating fraud loss 

Honeycomb is the observability backbone of our tech stack. On a scale from 1 to 10, I'm a resounding 10 on the net promoter score when it comes to recommending Honeycomb. It's the one tool we can’t live without.

Joel Tosi, CTO