fiskaly: Keeping retailer transaction records compliant with a scalable, cloud-based solution
About fiskaly
Founded in Austria in 2019, fiskaly makes it easy for retailers to comply with country-specific fiscalization laws, with its seamless, cloud-based solution. The company created Germany's market-leading cloud-based fiscalization software, operating in more than 600,000 cash registers across the country.
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Contact usWith secure, reliable infrastructure from Google Cloud, fiskaly won regulatory approval for its seamless, scalable, and fully compliant cloud-based fiscalization solution.
Google Cloud results
- Scales from zero to six million transactions a day in the first month, with Google Kubernetes Engine
- Secures 30 terabytes of customer receipt data in Google Cloud managed Postgres databases
- Expands easily to new regions with Google Cloud data centers enabling data sovereignty
Wins German regulatory approval with Google Cloud
Italy, 1983, and clunky cash registers up and down the country are making it easy for retailers to manipulate transaction records to pay less tax. Keen to clamp down on this gray economy, the government passes the world's first fiscalization laws, requiring retailers to attach specialist hardware to their point-of-sales systems, creating a tamper-proof transaction record to prevent tax evasion. Fast forward 40 years, and more than 40 countries around the world now have fiscalization laws, spawning an industry of manufacturers and vendors supplying retailers with the necessary hardware. However, as more retailers move to a software-based point-of-sale system, the fiscalization hardware is beginning to look as outdated as the cash registers they first modified.
With its fully cloud-based solution, Austrian company fiskaly is modernizing the fiscalization industry, offering retailers in Germany, Austria, and Spain a simple, seamless, and scalable way to comply with their countries' fiscalization requirements. With its easy integration and automated operation, and no need for maintenance or updates, fiskaly saves retailers time and money with what fiskaly CTO Patrick Gaubatz calls "plug-and-play compliance." Meanwhile, the point-of-sale vendors no longer need to invest resources in providing retailers with training, support, and maintenance throughout the hardware's lifecycle.
Searching for a secure cloud provider for sensitive customer data
As a disruptor, fiskaly knew it would face industry resistance when it first started out. The company searched for a reliable, scalable cloud provider on which to build its infrastructure. Security was a key consideration, both to protect retailers' tax-relevant data and to reassure cautious regulators that the cloud was just as secure as the traditional physical solution. "Our customers trust us with their highly sensitive tax-relevant data, so security and trustworthiness are very important," says Gaubatz. "Looking at the security track record of Google Cloud, along with its compliance certifications, we were convinced that its extremely high security standards made it a perfect fit for fiskaly."
"Our customers trust us with their highly sensitive tax-relevant data, so security and trustworthiness are very important. Looking at the security track record of Google Cloud, along with its compliance certifications, we were convinced that its extremely high security standards made it a perfect fit for fiskaly."
—Patrick Gaubatz, CTO, fiskalyScaling the business with scalable cloud architecture
fiskaly joined the Google for Startups program, gaining the investment it needed to get the company through its early days as it built its cloud infrastructure.
"When you're a bootstrap company, every penny counts," explains Gaubatz. "I'm not sure we would have made it without the Google for Startups program. Google Cloud sponsored all the infrastructure costs, meaning we could completely focus on building the team and the product, without worrying about the infrastructure."
With Google Cloud, fiskaly was able to build a reliable system that allowed it to rapidly scale up its operations and manage large volumes of transactions efficiently, growing from zero to six million transactions per day during the first month of operations. Two years on, fiskaly is now handling 20 million transactions per day.
Winning over the regulators with fully compliant cloud infrastructure
Where those transactions would traditionally have been recorded by a piece of physical hardware attached to a cash register, fiskaly's cloud-based solution recreates virtual equivalents of these tamper-proof boxes with software, virtually attaching each one to a point-of-sale system. Every one of these virtual 'boxes' is then replicated as a Docker container, containing highly sensitive customer data, which runs on virtual machines in fiskaly's customized, highly secure system built on Compute Engine. When fiskaly first launched its product for the German market, it needed the certification of Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), which scrutinized fiskaly's cloud-based solution to ensure it could secure customer data and protect it against manipulation.
"We had a lot of discussions with the BSI, but one thing that really helped us to gain approval was that Google Cloud was already audited by the BSI standards," says Gaubatz. "The fact that we were running and operating our product within a BSI-C5:2020 cloud environment allowed them to certify us as a secure, compliant solution."
Onboarding thousands of users at a time with compute power on demand
With hundreds of thousands of Docker containers now running on thousands of VMs in Compute Engine, fiskaly has a highly scalable solution that allows it to keep adding more resources on demand, every time a customer onboards new retailers to the system.
"It's very easy to change the configuration and the new computing power is there in a matter of seconds, on demand, whenever we need it," Gaubatz explains. "Some of our customers onboard thousands of cash registers at a time, but it has never been a problem because we can immediately spawn new infrastructure to accommodate the load. We don't have to worry about our infrastructure becoming a bottleneck, which is an enormous benefit for us."
Freedom to focus on features, thanks to managed cloud services
Outside of the BSI-certified secure component of fiskaly's infrastructure, a number of Google Cloud managed services, including Google Kubernetes Engine and Cloud SQL, run in tandem to ensure the API between the Docker containers and the point-of-sale system operates seamlessly. Using these managed services means that fiskaly doesn't need to dedicate time and resources to maintaining the infrastructure to ensure it operates smoothly and reliably.
"Our kubernetes clusters seem rock solid, we've never had any problems. The same goes for the Cloud SQL instances, which are super reliable. We have around 30 terabytes of receipt data stored in Google Cloud managed Postgres databases and I can sleep at night knowing that data is secure."
—Patrick Gaubatz, CTO, fiskaly"You will hardly find a company in the world that can run kubernetes clusters as reliably as Google Cloud," Gaubatz says. "Our kubernetes clusters seem rock solid, we've never had any problems. The same goes for the Cloud SQL instances, which are super reliable. We have around 30 terabytes of receipt data stored in Google Cloud managed Postgres databases and I can sleep at night knowing that data is secure."
Relieved of the need to manage the infrastructure, Gaubatz and his team are free to focus on developing fiskaly's software, building new products features and releasing them more quickly. "We can focus on actually building and improving our products, adding more features, fixing bugs, and we don't need to build expertise on running reliable infrastructure. All the infrastructure we need to run our software and our products is just magically there."
Building a stable solution with meticulous monitoring
To continue offering its customers a smooth reliable service, fiskaly uses Google Cloud Monitoring and Logging to ensure its system is operating exactly as it should be. Seamlessly integrated into its Google Cloud infrastructure, Cloud Monitoring has allowed fiskaly to add thousands of measurement points across its system to give it clear oversight of its operation. As Gaubatz explains, "every part of the system is monitored properly and if anything doesn't run as expected, it will immediately trigger alarms, so that engineers can fix it before it has an impact. Our customers are really happy with the stability and reliability of our system and Cloud Monitoring has been an invaluable tool to achieve that."
Currently offering its fiscalization solutions in Austria, Germany, and Spain, fiskaly is now planning to expand its operations to Italy and France. This international expansion is made easier by the presence of Google Cloud data centers in each of those countries, allowing fiskaly to comply with those countries' data sovereignty laws by hosting sensitive customer data within those jurisdictions.
A stable platform for future growth
Along with its plans to expand across borders, fiskaly is also planning to expand into the e-commerce market, offering digital retailers a cloud-based solution to comply with the European Union eInvoicing regulations. At the same time, fiskaly is exploring how it can use Google Cloud analytics and business intelligence solutions, including BigQuery and Looker, to offer new services to its customers. By tapping into the terabytes of structured data currently sitting in silos across the organization, fiskaly hopes to be able to offer customers new ways to leverage their transaction data to make strategic business decisions.
"Google Cloud has been a cornerstone in fiskaly's journey, providing a reliable, scalable platform to build a seamless fiscalization solution for our customers. As we add new products and services to our offering, Google Cloud will continue to enable sustained innovation and growth long into the future."
—Patrick Gaubatz, CTO, fiskaly"Google Cloud has been a cornerstone in fiskaly's journey, providing a reliable, scalable platform to build a seamless fiscalization solution for our customers," says Gaubatz. "As we add new products and services to our offering, Google Cloud will continue to enable sustained innovation and growth long into the future."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About fiskaly
Founded in Austria in 2019, fiskaly makes it easy for retailers to comply with country-specific fiscalization laws, with its seamless, cloud-based solution. The company created Germany's market-leading cloud-based fiscalization software, operating in more than 600,000 cash registers across the country.