Architecture

The K42 Network

K42 is a transaction-linked advertising network connecting three types of participants:

• Publishers - banks, card issuers, fintechs, and loyalty platforms who have end-users making card payments
• Advertisers/Brands - companies who configure cashback deals and loyalty programs to reach those end-users
• Retailers - merchants whose point-of-sale systems process the card payments

The K42 Platform sits at the centre, orchestrating campaign distribution, transaction routing, and reward processing between all parties.

System Components

Publisher Software

Deployed in the publisher's infrastructure (or managed by K42). Manages members, delivers deals, ingests transactions, and maintains wallet state. You can read more by following the Publisher Overview.

K42 Platform

The central orchestration layer. Manages campaigns, routes anonymized transactions to retailers, processes outcomes, and distributes rewards via webhooks. Advertisers and brands interact with the Platform to configure deals.

Retailer Software

Deployed in the retailer's cloud, managed by K42 (similar to how Publisher software can be managed). Receives routed transactions from the Platform, matches them against local customer payment data, and produces outcomes from basket data (cashback amounts, qualifying purchases).

The Processing Loop

When an end-user makes a card payment, the following cycle occurs:

1. The publisher (bank) ingests authorized card transactions for its members into the Publisher software
2. The Publisher software anonymizes the transaction data and augments it with relevant member-specific deal references - active deal clips, loyalty program enrollments, etc. It publishes this anonymized data with the attached references to the Platform
3. The Platform routes the transaction to the appropriate retailer
4. The K42 Retailer software (running in the retailer's own cloud) receives the transaction, matches it against its local payment data, and computes outcomes from customer basket data (e.g. cashback amounts)
5. Outcomes are published back to the Platform, which calculates rewards and dispatches webhook events (e.g. cashback.created) independently to both the Publisher software and the bank's own systems
6. When the transaction settles, the bank ingests the finalization (cleared) event into the Publisher software, which publishes it to the Platform
7. The Platform runs finalization logic and dispatches settlement webhooks (e.g. cashback.cleared) to both the Publisher software and the bank

This entire loop happens without any party having access to another party's raw data. See Privacy Model for details.

Campaign Distribution

Advertisers and brands configure deals and campaigns on the K42 Platform. The Platform distributes these to Publisher instances as placement configurations and creatives. The Publisher software syncs this content periodically and uses it to deliver relevant deals to members based on audience targeting rules.

Publishers do not configure deals - they create ad units (advertising surfaces) and the Platform determines which deals are eligible for each member based on the advertiser's targeting criteria and the member's attributes.