Every year, the Grand National event becomes the busiest day of the sporting calendar in terms of taking online bets for major players in the industry. During this time peak transaction rate performance becomes more business critical than ever, due to the surge in bets taken in the run up to start of the main race event in the mid-afternoon. If a punter can’t bet immediately they will go elsewhere.

Within DataCash there are the technical and operational challenges in making sure there is sufficient peak capacity headroom available year on year. The DataCash operational team ensure that every aspect of the internal systems is ready to take on the surge in transaction volume. Involved in this preparation is both first class monitoring of all key operational areas of the system and the placement of contingency plans so that in the event of issues arising at critical times a resolution has already been pre-empted. Constant and knowledgeable support during such an event is also critical and DataCash staff are on hand to carefully monitor progress and answer queries during the day, despite timings being outside of standard working hours.

Grand National Day is made all the more challenging when the event has seen significant year on year growth for DataCash’s online gaming merchants.

This year’s event was no exception - the volume of transactions processed was up by over 43% on last year’s figures. During the Saturday a total of 2.2 million transactions were processed with a value of over £109 million, hitting a peak rate of 4990 transactions per minute (TPM).