The project
Minka Inc. is a Colombian fintech founded in 2016 to implement a new, 100% cloud-based core banking business model through its infrastructure called Minka Cloud. Using disruptive technologies such as Blockchain to add transactional security to operations, it aims to connect all banking institutions in the region so they can make low-value money transfers between them through agile, more secure, real-time integrations.
They are currently making their biggest commitment by providing services to ACH Colombia, Colombia's largest payment clearinghouse, through its instant transfer platform, supplying an SDK so that all Colombian banks can join the initiative through their mobile applications. The product the company is developing has regional reach and is expected to be in more than 4 countries by 2020 in addition to Colombia and Bolivia, where it is currently present.
Challenge
To evolve its product, Minka decided to migrate its current infrastructure to Google Cloud, seeking to address several technology challenges with agility and adapt to every business and regulatory requirement that arises. These nonfunctional requirements include implementing a highly available solution that meets the legal service-level guidelines required by regulators. Communications pose another challenge: a core principle of the service is to provide a secure platform without the complexity of traditional communication channels such as VPNs.
“We are looking for a product that is 100% agile and revolutionary. We know that establishing a VPN with a bank can be very difficult, takes a long time, and is not really adding value to the business,” says Domagoj Rozic, CEO of Minka. Ultimately, the migration process aims to use most components in a PaaS model, allowing the company to focus on the business instead of infrastructure administration.
Response
To address the challenges of migrating Minka Cloud, the team and Servinformacion undertook several iterations that resolved each of the solution's requirements. The business core, which has a Blockchain-based platform, uses a graph database powered by Neo4J. To migrate this solution, a highly available architecture was proposed in zones east1-a and east1-b, with a VPC network structure and internal IP addressing within a DMZ.
At the service layer, the development language is NodeJS, chosen for its ability to respond quickly to client requests. Consequently, App Engine Standard was adopted as the service technology, allowing the team to focus on code, delegate security, manage logs natively, and integrate with the company's CI/CD processes. Finally, a disaster recovery plan was proposed for data in the central 1 region, using incremental snapshots as the first recovery point, with transaction deltas recovered from logs in StackDriver.
The World Wide Web changed how information is accessed and managed. Minka wants to do the same with money.
