MetroBank, S.A. is a financial institution with Panamanian capital that began operations in 1991. With more than 30 years of experience, the bank operates under a General License that allows it to offer a full range of banking services, standing out for its solidity and commitment to the economic development of Panama.
Its business model specializes in serving the Corporate and Commercial Banking, Private Banking, Premium Banking, and Digital Banking segments with excellence, always focused on building long-term relationships of trust.
Throughout its evolution, the entity has maintained a clear vision: to be the strategic partner of its clients through agile and personalized financial solutions.
This service philosophy is backed by a constant investment in cutting-edge technology and a highly trained human team, allowing them to adapt to the demands of a globalized market without losing their core essence as a relationship bank.
With innovation in the local market as its north star, MetroBank set out to integrate Yappy into its services, an interbank payment platform in Panama that allows sending and receiving money instantly using a mobile phone number.
This project, led by Roberto Boyd, Vice President of Transformation and Innovation, represented a historic milestone as the bank's first cloud-native project, marking a before and after in its technological roadmap.
The initiative not only sought to modernize payments but also to establish a new standard of operational efficiency and competitiveness in digital banking.
By selecting IVCISA as its strategic technology partner, the bank successfully deployed a scalable ecosystem on AWS (Amazon Web Services) that guarantees high availability and complete technical integration.
This joint effort allowed MetroBank to transcend the limitations of traditional banking, enabling real-time payment rails and expanding its offering for both individuals and businesses.
Beyond a technical implementation, the Yappy project was the catalyst for an operational transformation within the organization.
It represented verification that MetroBank can iterate with agility while maintaining the rigor and security of an established banking institution.
This technological foundation now serves as the cornerstone upon which the bank will continue to build disruptive digital services, ensuring that every customer enjoys a seamless, secure, and highly available experience.
Before this project, MetroBank did not have a direct P2P payment mechanism with an internal native flow, which limited immediate transaction options for local customers.
MetroBank set the goal of redefining its architecture to eliminate any point of friction in the user experience.
As Roberto Boyd, Vice President of Transformation and Innovation at MetroBank, indicates, the vision was clear: the bank needed to evolve “chapter by chapter” to offer a platform that was not only functional but also resilient and modern.
To achieve this, four fundamental pillars of transformation were established in conjunction with IVCISA, an AWS Advanced Partner:
Enabling Immediate Payment Rails: The goal was to integrate native flows to allow P2P and P2M transactions in real time, overcoming the limitations of traditional payment methods.
Evolution Toward Modern APIs: The objective was to transition toward a model of microservices and transactional APIs that would allow a much more agile and secure product lifecycle.
Guaranteeing Resilience and 24/7 Availability: It was vital to ensure that critical services such as secure authentication (OTP/Soft Token) were available under high availability standards that only the cloud can offer natively.
Adoption of Methodologies (CI/CD): The internal operational model was transformed to adopt continuous improvement processes, facilitating rapid and secure deployments of new components.
“This project has not only been the bank's first cloud-native project, but it also paved the way for us to make decisions that sometimes felt overwhelming due to the lack of technical knowledge in the cloud. Our partner IVCISA supported us by guiding us 100% to make the right, informed, and secure decisions.”
The collaboration between MetroBank and IVCISA enabled an exceptionally stable integration, improving the traceability of every operation.
Since its launch, the project has achieved a 98% success rate in transaction processing, demonstrating the robustness of the implemented architecture.
As Roberto Boyd indicates, to date they have achieved a 95% successful affiliation rate among their customers.
Similarly, he indicates that 90% of the transactions performed are P2P and the other 10% are P2M, validating the success of the service's demand.
Through comprehensive consulting with IVCISA, a modern infrastructure was designed and deployed on AWS based on segregated environments, scalable compute, and managed services that guarantee high availability, elasticity, and regulatory compliance.
This project allowed Yappy to evolve into an architecture prepared for continuous growth, with a solid foundation of security and automated operations.
Among the solutions implemented are:
For MetroBank, IVCISA's role was fundamental because it allowed technical iterations to flow with agility, guaranteeing that the move to the cloud was a structured and successful process.
The adoption of the cloud with the Yappy project has allowed MetroBank not only to improve customer service but also to optimize operational costs through the consolidation of environments and the use of native tools for business resilience and continuity.
“We achieved a stable integration, and I am putting the word stable in bold. For
We have high availability, we have better traceability, and we are definitely providing a safer experience for our customers... with validations and processes that are much faster and with fewer frictions.”
