THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Discover how two organizations up-ended the status quo with cloud technology.
Disruption—the dream of young, hungry companies and the dread of the Establishment. Whichever side you’re on, it’s always big news. What we used to know about business has changed, thanks to cloud computing and other technologies that are enabling possibilities we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
Nowhere is disruption more fiercely sought after than in the financial sector, which has become saturated with new contenders that have harnessed the cloud to redefine banking. Everyone wants a piece of the financial services pie—even Apple, Google, and Facebook announced financial ventures within the past year. As banking giants scramble and throw billions into going digital to keep market share, consumer and commercial dollars are up for grabs to the boldest, brightest innovators that can prove their worth.
Here are just two financial companies that have risked big—and won big—by going all-in on cloud technology. They’re blazing the trail to a new fintech future, rich with the promise of better ways to manage spending, save money, invest capital, and grow wealth.
Warba Bank: Upwardly Mobile Innovation
In 2010, as a reparative response to the global financial crisis, Warba Bank was established in Kuwait by Amiri Decree. As a newcomer to the highly competitive banking scene in Kuwait, Warba Bank had a lot to prove. The organization’s leadership wanted to differentiate the bank and developed an aggressive digital strategy to transform the way it served retail customers.
Wael Shawareb, the bank’s Senior Director of Cyber Security and IT governance, led the project. He says they began to look at cloud solutions in 2014 with the goal of launching the bank’s first new digital services by 2017. Through his research, he knew that the cloud was the only way to deliver the fast, automated services that would help the organization stand out. The thing was, no bank in Kuwait had adopted cloud technologies in any significant way. Warba Bank was the first, and being an early adopter comes with a unique set of challenges.
The biggest challenge was security. Since the digital services operated differently and organized and accessed data differently, they required new security features that weren’t found in existing products. “Even the well-known security vendors in the market hadn’t adapted yet to the DevOps model,” says Shawareb. “Most of them were still behind in the concept of agile development and integration.”
The team had to build their own security from the ground up for their specific environment and in careful compliance with strict financial regulations. Other challenges included integration issues between third-party solutions and an extremely tight timeline to accomplish their goals.
Despite the difficulties, Warba Bank met its 2017 deadline for launching the country’s first online account activation and electronic signature function. These express services allowed customers to request opening an account using their mobile device in just 10 minutes. The bank also developed a mobile application through which customers could view balances, manage accounts, track spending, monitor family finances from a single dashboard, split bills, and send payments to friends and family.
Adopting the DevOps model and agile development was critical to creating the new products and putting the organization at the vanguard of digital banking services in Kuwait. When the mobile app was launched, the team was able to update it every month or so with bug fixes or new features. Now, thanks to an always-improving DevOps team and automation functions, they’re able to update the app on an almost daily basis.
JamboPay: Gateway to Financial Fitness
At the age of 25, Danson Muchemi recognized a need that banks in Kenya hadn’t fulfilled. He’d started an e-commerce shop but couldn’t find a reliable local gateway to process payments for his products. In the spirit of a true pathfinder, he teamed up with a friend and started JamboPay to bridge the gap.
It was 2009 and the first six months of JamboPay’s business was done from a cyber café. It was difficult work because at the time, there was no framework or support in Kenya for startup businesses or for creating an online payment gateway. There were also no laws governing the digital payments industry at all. Most difficult of all was the lack of trust in digital payment systems and, in some areas, even awareness of the possibility among the population at large. Muchemi worked closely with the Central Bank of Kenya to ensure the gateway complied with national security and privacy regulations. He developed the platform to align with international financial standards, such as PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), which regulates the way businesses handle major credit cards. He also chose his partners well. “Working with reputable, top-notch cloud technology providers helped us attain and maintain compliance requirements,” he says.
“The cloud gives service providers an efficient and effective way to extend services over vast regions, beating traditional physical barriers. Providers can deploy services more quickly than ever today.”
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