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Banco Topázio is a longtime partner of Sensedia, and had the challenge of transforming a traditional bank into a digital company. The result has been surprising. So much so that Banco Topázio's BaaS Director, Carlos Eduardo Klein told a little about this story during the APIX Stories in Porto Alegre.
I selected some of the highlights from the lecture in this article and some ideas on how you can apply it in your scenario. If you wish to check what it was like in full, click here.
Banco Topázio emerged in 2005 and belongs to the same Correa da Silva group that founded Getnet and Embratec. The Bank's traditional business today is selling credit to networks affiliated with the Ticket banner, having as end customers the small retailers.
More than a bank, Topázio is also a technology company. Currently, it helps Fintechs to put services on the market, with the challenge of serving swiftly, flexibly, changing the way it works without bumping into the limitations of the core banking. It had to understand how to allow Fintechs to create the best user experience in a frictionless manner, delivering value.
Thus, the company understood that a total change in its routines was necessary, thinking a little more like a Startup, instead of a traditional bank. Thus, they adopted agile methodologies, principles of design thinking, and based on that, they started to modernize Topázio IT. The first changes came through APIs, which enabled more agile integrations, and later on the development of microservices, as a way to meet the new scales and business needs.
All of this was only possible when it started to hear more about what customers needed, working from this point and focusing on the specific scenario of each one.
1 - APIs are digital business enablers, especially with Fintechs. Without them, it would not be possible to have the business scale it needs.
2 – By combining APIs and Microservices it is possible to work on different business formats without having to develop anything new internally. One of the Open Banking concepts that applies very well in this scenario is the ability to recombine services and new experiences. The objective in this context is to insert an enriching financial experience in users' journeys.
3 - In e-commerce, it could feel, along with the partner Mercado Livre, that when a customer is at check-out, this is the most important point of friction. Everything must be resolved quickly and without friction and, with the APIs, it is possible to allow the user experience to be positive.
4 - When combining APIs with Microservices, we achieve a very large isolation of the banking core, facilitating the process. An example of that is the stability of the platform that brings intelligence, especially in terms of security.
With the creation of the Dev Portal, the developers of a Fintechs have access to all the API documentation, allowing the integration process with the bank to be done more easily. One of the great advantages of the API model is the flexibility and practicality for developers to create new products, based on the services provided.
Banco Topázio has shown itself to be a reference in Open Banking, with its open APIs so that Fintechs and Partners can develop new applications through their services.
APIs became central factors in Banco Topázio's positioning, making it one of the first banks to follow an Open Banking model in Brazil.
And despite all the challenges for being a traditional bank and breaking the way that management thinks about the business, the reason for having persisted in this, is that based on a great deal of study, it knew that the APIs combined with Microservices would be a directional and that this new market is constantly growing.
