Cinimex Received TAdviser IT Prize For VTB Bank Project
Cinimex helped VTB Bank to build and deploy a platform for processing financial transactions (PPFT). It is underpinned by a stack of technologies based on open-source products and libraries, and supports Russian and international standards on exchange of financial information, but only employs domestic solutions.
The TAdviser IT Prize in the nomination “Digitalization in banks: Project of the year” was awarded for PPFT solution to Oleg Boltar, Deputy Head of the Department of settlements automation, VTB Bank, and Denis Ermilov, Deputy Key Accounts Director, Cinimex.
Oleg Boltar commented that the project is primarily defined by the uniqueness of VTB’s payment system, which has an extensive geography and numerous payment channels, including public payment systems. The project allowed the bank to draw all channels together on the same platform, unify payment processing and implement automation of numerous channels of interbank interaction. PPFT allows connecting new customers and further expand payments’ geography.
Denis Ermilov pointed out that one of the key tasks of the project was to create a versatile and reliable platform for information exchange between banks, legal entities and payment systems based on domestic solutions only, and build an architecture that would allow adding different types and routes of financial messages without modifying the key components of the PPFT system. Cinimex team was able to design a model, which allows connecting new clients and new countries or building payment routes without major changes in the code.
In terms of technology, the project met the goal of imports phase-out, meaning that the platform components are completely independent from foreign technologies. Apart from a new program architecture, the microservices architecture has enabled a different approach to forming teams for new services and significantly enhanced time to deployment in the bank’s payment landscape.
Oleg Boltar emphasized that Cinimex and VTB Bank are bound by decades of successful collaboration. The team has all the necessary experience and competencies, and that is why the bank chose Cinimex. In turn, Denis Ermilov added that Cinimex’s specialists have an in-depth knowledge of the tech stack used in the platform, and they understand the specifics of payment services, the transaction business and bank infrastructure, which is also important when dealing with such a complex project, because PPFT interacts with a dozen of other IT systems.
The Bank has defined three intended growth areas for PPFT. The first one is further scaling, expanding the geography of the payment system, supporting new financial formats and attracting new customers. The second area is using the platform to offer customers FMS (Financial Messaging System) services, and thirdly, non-financial information exchange services.