Billie: Building a more secure infrastructure for independent fintech

About Billie

German startup Billie offers online invoice factoring services to its customers, helping them to advance payments for their outstanding invoices.

Industries: Financial Services & Insurance

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German fintech startup Billie scales complex infrastructure quickly and efficiently with managed services on Google Cloud Platform, using Google BigQuery to identify the best clients to target.

Google Cloud Results

  • Helps secures reliability with multiple data repositories and one way synchronization
  • Enables experimentation so Billie can react to market changes
  • Targets new clients with Google BigQuery analytics

More secure, stable scaling for monthly growth of up to 78%

Late payment of invoices can be a real problem for small and medium enterprises. That’s why German startup Billie created its factoring service, providing an invoice factoring service to customers who upload their invoices to its online platform, so companies can better secure their cash flow and keep operations on track.

“As this is a financial service, everything needs to be as secure and reliable. Each cent on our accounts must be proved, and we need a strong partner that provides this kind of flexibility and reliability. That’s why we’re working with Google Cloud Platform.”

Artem Demchenkov, CTO, Billie

Because Billie is an intermediary in handling payments, reliability and security are of the utmost importance. Where its competitors work as subsidiaries of large, established firms, Billie operates as an independent company and had to obtain its own operating license from the German financial authorities. To create a platform that is stable and more secure, Billie built its solution on Google Cloud Platform.

“We’re trying to create a factoring process that is completely online and simpler, faster, and more intuitive than other options on the market,” says Artem Demchenkov, CTO at Billie. “As this is a financial service, everything needs to be as secure and reliable as possible. Each cent on our accounts must be proved, and we need a strong partner that provides that kind of flexibility and reliability. That’s why we’re working with Google Cloud Platform.”

“What’s great in Google Cloud Platform is that we can better ensure that nothing is going to be lost and we have the capability to recover within a very short amount of time. Google Cloud offers great out-of-the-box features for creation of reserve data vaults, for example one-way Google Cloud Storage Bucket synchronization from project to project.”

Igor Chtivelband, VP Data, Billie

Creating a reliable infrastructure

Finance companies need to deliver more stability and security to gain the trust of their clients. To maximize competitiveness, Billie looked to build a stable, scalable platform from scratch with the flexibility to adapt to market conditions.

To do that, Billie built its solution on Google Cloud Platform. Thanks to Google Cloud Platform managed services and intuitive interfaces, Billie’s team of seven engineers set up their solution in just five months. With Google Cloud Storage, Billie runs a daily one-way automatic synchronization with a data repository. Only designated members of the team are able to access the repository through their Google Workspace accounts, so that backups are constantly on-hand in the worst-case scenario of a cyberattack. Meanwhile auto-scaling Compute Engine instances with Container Registry and easy synchronization of data through Cloud Pub/Sub deliver highly reliable, well-integrated system for handling constantly updated payment information.

“What’s great in Google Cloud Platform is that we can better ensure that nothing is going to be lost and we have the capability to recover within a very short amount of time,” says Igor Chtivelband, VP Data, Billie. “Google Cloud offers great out-of-the-box features for creation of reserve data vaults, for example one-way Google Cloud Storage Bucket synchronization from project to project.”

In-built innovation opportunities

Thanks to managed services, Billie’s DevOps department is free to focus on innovating with the range of Google Cloud Platform products. Using Google BigQuery, Billie collates data from highly heterogeneous data sources to evaluate the efficiency of its digital and offline marketing. Analyzing that data helps Billie identify potential clients for its services and produce advertising targeted to those specific groups. The speed with which data models based on Google BigQuery can be adjusted means Billie can keep its acquisition price per customer low, part of Billie’s flexible, experimental approach to growth.

“The beauty of Google Cloud Platform is that you can take your code and move it into different areas within the platform until you find the one that fits best,” says Igor. “First of all, you learn a lot through that kind of experimenting, and secondly, it’s fun! That’s what makes it so engaging.”

“We see our future with Google Cloud. I have big expectations for Google Machine Learning because as we grow and collect additional data, we will have to fight against fraud cases. Machine Learning could help identify suspicious activity on the spot.”

Igor Chtivelband, VP Data, Billie

Building for future growth

With the highly scalable platform Billie built on Google Cloud Platform managed services, the company has achieved exponential growth. Now Billie is looking to expand its services to other countries with new products able to operate without any UI, thanks to APIs that will provide services such as automatically processing large numbers of invoices. Key to this expansion is a move onto Google Kubernetes Engine, to make deployment easier and simplify scaling.

“We will definitely continue working with Google Cloud Platform,” adds Igor. “I have big expectations for Google Cloud Machine Learning. As we grow, we will have to fight against fraud cases. Machine Learning could help identify suspicious activity on the spot.”

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

Contact us

About Billie

German startup Billie offers online invoice factoring services to its customers, helping them to advance payments for their outstanding invoices.

Industries: Financial Services & Insurance