Webhooks Explained: Smarter, Faster, Cleaner Data with Argyle

With instant, round-the-clock notifications of user data changes, you can make savvier business decisions—every time.

Traditional ways of requesting, collecting, and updating user data rely on antiquated systems and inefficient manual processes that are a burden for you and your customers. Plus, you're ultimately left with outdated, static data points, meaning you'll have to inconvenience your users (and start the process all over again) whenever you need an update.

With Argyle, there's a better way.

Our webhooks notify you instantly and automatically of any changes to your user's income and employment data on an ongoing basis. So if a customer is laid off, gets a raise, or starts a new job, you'll know about it right away—empowering you to make better underwriting, lending, and sales-related decisions.

Webhooks are a gamechanger for any company that relies on income and employment data to shape their  business, and Argyle offers by far the most robust, customizable solution. Let’s explore some of the ways our webhooks lead to higher quality data for you—and lead to an  improved experience for your users.

What are webhooks?

Webhooks connect directly to your user data and automatically pull information whenever there's a change. For example, if your customer gets laid off from their job, their employer will update the payroll system, and you'll get an immediate notification and see the change reflected on the user’s profile in real time.

What are webhooks used for?

Historically, the alternative to using webhooks has been manual data collection and independent follow-up. In the above example, your customer may (or may not) have let you know they’d been let go, and you'd have to reach out to have them update their profile—maybe weeks, maybe months after the fact. That’s hardly fresh information, let alone a practical working process for your business.

Without webhooks, it's difficult or downright impossible to keep your user data accurate and up to date. It's always going to be lagging behind and full of potentially harmful knowledge gaps.

How do webhooks work to change the game?

Continuous, real-time access to user data opens the door to a store of new opportunities, including:

• Ensuring compliance

• Monitoring portfolio health

• Knowing when (and how) to up-sell

• Streamlining communications

• Pulling what you need, when you need it

Let’s break each of these benefits down one by one.

Ensuring compliance

Webhooks allow you to take advantage of more reliable loan repayment options like paycheck-linked loans. With a paycheck-linked loan, a borrower sets up their direct deposit so that a portion of each paycheck automatically goes toward funding the loan repayment. 

Webhooks also enable you to track payouts during the loan repayment period and to monitor any modifications to a borrower's direct deposit data.

Monitoring portfolio health

Webhooks send you a notification whenever a user’s income drops or halts altogether, giving you greater insights into customer risk and helping you to avoid defaults.

Keeping a constant, comprehensive watch over your portfolio health will help you to make better lending decisions and more accurately predict outcomes moving forward.

Knowing when (and how) to up-sell 

With webhooks, you'll get to know your users better and be able to assess how they’re doing financially, which will inform how you should suggest, promote, and ultimately sell different products.

For example, if your customer has been doing great with their home loan and they just received a pay raise, you might want to inquire if they're interested in an auto loan as well.

Streamlining communications

Webhooks remove friction from the customer communication process, making everyone’s lives a bit easier by saving a bunch of time.

For instance, with returning customers or loan agreements with lengthier closing periods, borrowers won't have to keep uploading pay stubs and employment documentation at every turn—you’ll already have everything you need in place. This allows both sides to skip the tedious paperwork and jump straight into the decision making process.

Pulling what you need, when you need it

Using webhooks, you can pull the exact data points you need—and only the data points you need—on your own terms and according to your own schedule. That isn’t just convenient; it means you won’t waste time sorting through needless loads of data you didn’t mean to retrieve just to get to the relevant information. This flexibility ensures you have the right data at your fingertips without getting bogged down in irrelevant minutiae. (This is also a best practice for security reasons, by not having more information than you need.)

Your business may be interested in fluctuating paycheck amounts, or you may be more concerned with customers taking on new gig work. With webhooks—and Argyle’s webhooks in particular—you can customize events and get notified for what matters most.

What makes Argyle’s webhooks special?

A variety of businesses use webhooks to sync data across applications, but webhooks aren't so prevalent in the employment and income data space. In fact, most platforms still require you to manually request updates from your users, leading to stale and inaccurate data.

That’s not great.

Argyle is different. We provide continuous, real time access to your user's income and employment data, giving you the cutting-edge insights you need to make savvier business decisions.

How do webhooks work differently at Argyle? Our webhooks let you get granular and customize your notifications, with smart controls triggering an alert only if specific conditions are met. For example, you could set your parameters so that a webhook notification is triggered only after 30 days of historical activities have been synced.

This is a much more efficient and cost-effective way of monitoring user data. Rather than having to comb through the wealth of data Argyle’s API provides to find the one point you’re looking for—and not really knowing if there’s even been a significant change—you can sit back and let our webhooks do the work for you.

Think of it like a supercharged tv programming service. Would you rather watch hours of television hoping your favorite show comes on, or have a unit automatically notify you when it’s time to tune in? Do the latter—but with your data.

Get started with Argyle webhooks

Luckily, getting hooked on data is easy—it’s really just a few lines of code.

You can check out our docs to learn everything there is to know about Argyle’s webhooks and take a peek into our easy integration. We provide a simple, step-by-step guide on how to subscribe, customize, and organize our webhooks and keep your data in sync.

Or—if you’re raring to go on continuous, up to date customer data—sign up for an Argyle account, and get up and running in no time.