How Discount Bank scaled to handle 200% more traffic with Google Cloud
Meet Discount Bank
With fewer people carrying cash these days, managing small transfers for group payments can be tricky. Whether itโs splitting the bill for a pizza with friends or paying for a personal trainer, people now find that traditional bank account remittances simply take too long. Israeli startupย PayBoxย offers a solution to this problem through a simple app that makes it easy to send or collect money between people and groups. Launched in 2014, in 2018 PayBoxโs Israeli operation was acquired byย Discount Bank, one of the biggest banks in Israel, and has more than 1.5 million users.
The challenge
โThe banking sector is changing dramatically: people donโt want to access services in the usual way, at a physical branch during working hours,โ explains Sarit Beck-Barkai, Head of Paybox Operations at Discount Bank. โAt Discount Bank, weโre focused on how people will use banking services in the future, and PayBox is part of that. All you need to set up the app is a credit or debit card and an Israeli phone number, and then you can make payments with a single click.โ
In order for the acquisition to go ahead, Discount Bank needed to gain the consent of the Bank of Israel to operate workloads in the cloud. Growing PayBox onย Google Cloudย offered Discount Bank the security features it required to meet Israeli banking regulations, as well as the ability to scale up easily.
โWhen we acquired PayBox, our goal was to improve the security and the user experience, but we also wanted to keep the startupโs agility and innovation,โ says Sarit. โStaying with Google Cloud has been an easy decision.โ
The solution
Meeting banking security requirements
Making sure an application is robust and secure is key for any enterprise, but especially when large numbers of transactions are involved. โWhen we acquired PayBox, it had been built on Google Cloud, but there was room for improvement,โ explains Sarit. โWe needed to bring its security features up to the level required for the banking sector.โ
Working with implementation partnerย DoiT International, the team responsible for PayBox at Discount Bank put into place two-step authentication for logins, SSL certification, and database encryption for sensitive data usingย Key Management Serviceย withย Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). These features bring PayBox in line with the broader Discount Bank security ecosystem. To keep important documentation and information in one place, the PayBox team within Discount Bank usesย G Suiteย services includingย Gmailย andย Driveย to share PayBox-related documents.
The persistent disk snapshot function onย Compute Engineย is also key to meeting regulatory requirements. โWe are obliged to create a snapshot of all the transactions taking place every 15 minutes, and keep those records for seven years,โ explains Guy Tobul, Dev Team Leader at Discount Bank. Using Compute Engine, PayBox can custom design the exact virtual machines required for its workloads by specifying the exact CPU and memory it needs.
PayBox usesย BigQueryย to monitor the service it provides by analyzing log data. โWe use BigQuery to monitor all our operations,โ says Guy. โThat means handling large volumes of data, as each transaction generates hundreds of log lines. Weโve been amazed at how fast BigQuery can generate reports: itโs a truly great product.โ
Achieving easy deployment and scaling
To keep its application up-to-date, PayBox uses a continuous deployment model on GKE, so new code is deployed every day. As its infrastructure deploys multiple pods in parallel, it is easy to isolate any issues that might occur.
As for scaling, GKE scales automatically to meet the peaks in demand that PayBox experiences. โTraffic varies over the week, since nights and weekends are much quieter, and we also have seasonal peaks around the holidays and the beginning of the academic year,โ explains Sarit. โA peak might mean 200% more traffic, but with GKE, we can easily handle the extra traffic.โ
The result
Since acquiring PayBoxโs operations in Israel, Discount Bank has successfully gained permission to run PayBox as part of the bank and grown its user base significantly. User satisfaction with the PayBox app is high, with a rating of 4.8 out of 5 for the Android App on Google Play. โPayBox is completely hosted in the cloud, and has gained approval from the central banking authorities in Israel,โ says Sarit. โSince we acquired the app, its user base has grown from 120,000 to more than 1.5 million users. This is possible thanks to the flexibility offered by Google Cloud.โ
Discount Bank is now looking to grow the app further by extending its functionality through partnerships with other major enterprises. โThrough our latest initiative, users can now use PayBox to top up their Rav-Kav, the electronic transport card that enables people to travel on the Israeli transportation network,โ says Sarit. Further partnerships are in the pipeline.
โWorking with Google Cloud gives us the flexibility we need to launch new partnerships that are going to grow our user base exponentially,โ she adds. โWeโre really happy with the growth weโve achieved so far, and are looking forward to having more users, more transactions, and more services to offer.โ
What's next?
Discount Bank is now looking to grow the app further by extending its functionality through partnerships with other major enterprises. โThrough our latest initiative, users can now use PayBox to top up their Rav-Kav, the electronic transport card that enables people to travel on the Israeli transportation network,โ says Sarit. Further partnerships are in the pipeline.
โWorking with Google Cloud gives us the flexibility we need to launch new partnerships that are going to grow our user base exponentially,โ she adds. โWeโre really happy with the growth weโve achieved so far, and are looking forward to having more users, more transactions, and more services to offer.โ