Articles/Developer Guide
Developer GuideJune 20, 2026·12 min read

Building a Bank Card Deals Aggregator in Pakistan

AM

Arham Mirkar

Founder, DataLayer

If you're a Pakistani developer thinking about building a bank card deals comparison app, you're looking at one of the most fragmented data problems in the country. Here's what it actually takes — and the shortcut that saved us months.

The Hard Way: Building from Scratch

We know because we built it. Here's what the scraping and normalization pipeline looks like when you start from zero:

  • 1Identify all bank deal pages — 7+ banks, each with different URL structures and HTML layouts
  • 2Build custom scrapers for each bank — some render deals in JavaScript, others serve PDF catalogs, some put deals in social media posts
  • 3Normalize merchant names — "Kababjees" vs "Kababjees Restaurant" vs "Kababjees Clifton" are the same merchant
  • 4Categorize deals — dining, shopping, travel, healthcare — each bank uses different category labels
  • 5Extract discount amounts — some banks say "25% off", others say "Up to 25%", others just show a flat PKR amount
  • 6Geo-tag by city — many deals are city-specific but banks don't always specify which city
  • 7Deduplicate — the same merchant may appear in multiple bank deals with the same or similar offers
  • 8Expire old deals — deals have varying validity periods and must be removed when they expire
  • 9Run daily — the entire pipeline must execute daily to catch new deals and expire old ones

Realistically, this takes 3-6 monthsfor a competent engineering team. And it's never "done" — banks change their HTML, add new deal formats, and launch seasonal campaigns that break your parsers.

The DataLayer Way: One API Call

DataLayer's Financial Deals API gives you structured, normalized, deduplicated bank card deals data via a single REST endpoint. No scraping, no normalization, no maintenance.

GET /v1/deals
curl "https://api.example.com/v1/deals?bank=hbl&city=karachi&category=dining" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer dl_live_your_key"

// Response
{
  "status": "success",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "deal_hbl_kababjees_01",
      "merchant": {
        "name": "Kababjees",
        "category": "dining",
        "city": "Karachi",
        "branch": "Clifton"
      },
      "bank": "HBL",
      "card_types": ["Platinum Visa", "Gold Visa"],
      "discount": {
        "type": "percentage",
        "value": 25,
        "description": "25% off on dine-in"
      },
      "valid_until": "2026-07-31",
      "source_url": "https://hbl.com/deals/..."
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "total": 2247,
    "page": 1,
    "per_page": 20,
    "last_updated": "2026-06-20T08:00:00Z"
  }
}

That's it. Filter by bank, city, category, card type, or merchant. Paginate through the full dataset. Get deals that are structured, normalized, and guaranteed fresh.

What the API Gives You

10,000+
Active deals
20+
Banks
1,500+
Merchants
Structured Merchant Data — Normalized names, categories, cities, branches — no more fuzzy matching
Card-Level Filtering — Filter by specific card types (Platinum, Gold, Visa, Mastercard)
City Coverage — Deals tagged by city — Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and 5+ more
Daily Freshness — Pipeline runs daily. Expired deals are removed, new ones appear automatically
Deduplication — Same merchant appearing in multiple sources is cleaned and merged

Case Study: CardWise

CardWise is Pakistan's bank card savings app — it shows users which card in their wallet gives the best discount at any merchant. The entire app is powered by DataLayer's APIs:

Financial Deals API — powers the deals feed, search, and card matching

Merchant Intelligence API — provides structured merchant names, logos, and branch data

Card Comparison API — lets users compare card features and select the right ones

CardWise launched in weeks instead of months because they didn't build a single scraper. They focused entirely on the mobile experience while DataLayer handled the data.

Getting Started

Ready to build on Pakistani financial data? Get access to the Financial Deals API and start building in minutes. Request API access →

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