ACH Colombia launches Transfiya, an immediate electronic transfer service based on Google Cloud
About ACH Colombia
ACH Colombia was created in 1997 as an Authorized Clearance Chamber, given the interest of financial entities to offer new services to their clients. The company delivers Interbanking transfer services in lots (ACH transfers), online interbanking transfers (Transfiya), Online Secure Payment Button (PSE), Integral Management for Online Payment (Pasarela PSE) and Information Operation Service (SOI).
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Contact usThanks to Google Cloud solutions, ACH Colombia launched Transfiya, a service that aims to facilitate transactions among financial entities immediately.
Results
- +3,900,000 transfers made
- +2,000,000 user accounts
- +18,000 daily transactions on average
Delivers a 24/7 service in all regions of the country
ACH Colombia was created with the purpose of giving solutions to the financial industry, so that Colombians could have more tools to use electronic payment means, and to promote financial inclusion among users, helping to break barriers between financial entities and clients.
The company, which has delivered several services for more than 23 years, decided to face a new need of Colombians: send, receive, and request money in an easy and immediate manner, without the need to go anywhere and at any time of the day. This is a solution for an increasing concern in the current context of social distancing and preventive confinement as part of prevention measures against the spread of COVID-19.
In February 2020, ACH Colombia launched Transfiya with the help of Google Cloud. This new service uses technologies such as blockchain to help users to make transfers in a more rapid and secure manner, allowing them to send, receive, or request money. Also, it promotes the use of e-money, which helps reduce costs and the use of cash and increases the level of security of transactions.
"Transfiya is a service created together with financial entities allowing transactions to be made only by knowing the mobile phone number, simplifying the experience of users. Transfiya makes transactions among different financial entities easier, contributing to the protection of users as they do not need to move and use cash."
—Gustavo Vega Villamil, President, ACH ColombiaIn search of innovation
The global trend of companies in the financial industry is to include more cloud-based solutions. In Colombia, this search is growing in the most disruptive companies of the country with the purpose of innovating and updating their systems.
Trying to improve the experience of all clients and taking this trend into consideration, ACH Colombia made a partnership with Minka, an open banking platform built on the cloud that allows companies to create new financial products in little time with the help of Google Cloud.
In light of the challenge to deliver a 24/7 service and considering that Transfiya works with different channels offered by each financial entity to their clients (website, mobile app, or social networks), ACH Colombia needed an infrastructure on the cloud that is highly scalable and that is also available for unbanked users.
The first step for the technology team of ACH Colombia was to start using Google Cloud tools that could give the secure, reliable, and scalable infrastructure that Transfiya needed to offer a quality service.
With Cloud Load Balancing, a Google Cloud service that allows location of resources in an only IP anycast, Transfiya was able to be available in different areas. Also, with App Engine, it could assure scalability of the solution, and Firebase, Cloud Run, BigQuery, and Google Cloud operations tools enabled secure transactions and monitoring actions.
“From my point of view I can say that Google Cloud has been of great help, and we have found great advantages as they enabled the adaptation required to use the service in different layers and which allows us to have a quality and highly secure core financial sector with innovation in many components, within which we can highlight, for example, the blockchain core that we use.”
—Luis Alberto Fernandes Pulido, Vice President of Transactions and Technology, ACH ColombiaA change for the future
Today, Transfiya has become a relevant tool for their users as they do not have to leave their homes to solve financial issues.
Thanks to the implementation of Google Cloud, ACH Colombia able to deliver efficient services to their clients. Until July 2021, there have been more than 3,900,000 transfers, more than 407 billion pesos have been processed, and there are more than 2,000,000 service users. Moreover, the number of average transactions per day went from 2,800 in July 2020 to more than 18,000 in July 2021.
One of the greatest challenges of ACH Colombia is to have more partners in their search to improve financial transactions. Today, there is the support of an important group of financial entities that operate in the country such as Daviplata, Nequi, Movii, Banco Caja Social, Banco Coopcentral, Banco Itaú, Banco AV Villas, Banco Serfinanza, and Banco Davivienda.
“One of the challenges of ACH Colombia is to become a partner in the financial sector. This is how in an exercise of co-creation with financial entities and thinking of the needs of users, the Transfiya service was implemented. Today, we have nine related entities and more than 2,000,000 users," says Lina Marcela Vargas, Manager of the Projects Office of ACH Colombia.
In the future, the company expects to continue growing and working with more entities with the purpose of strengthening Transfiya services and including more technology tools in the cloud to give better experiences to their users.
“Transfiya has been growing in the number of related entities, in the volume of P2P transactions made, and in the number of service users. We will continue working together with financial entities to offer, through the ecosystem, functions to transfer and pay in an immediate, easy, and secure manner.”
—Erwin Schaefer Navarro, Vice President of Planning and Business, ACH Colombia.Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About ACH Colombia
ACH Colombia was created in 1997 as an Authorized Clearance Chamber, given the interest of financial entities to offer new services to their clients. The company delivers Interbanking transfer services in lots (ACH transfers), online interbanking transfers (Transfiya), Online Secure Payment Button (PSE), Integral Management for Online Payment (Pasarela PSE) and Information Operation Service (SOI).