Cross-border digital banking
Multicountry
In 2018, TBC Group in Georgia created a neobank that exists only as a mobile app, without traditional branches and no physical presence. In a way, TBC launched its own competitor. Structured as an autonomous business line, Space Neobank provides customers with the full range of retail banking services including loans, saving products and payment cards.
Space Neobank was launched on Mambu in a record time of eight months. Mambu’s cloud-native approach gave TBC’s Georgian operation unparalleled flexibility, swift time to market and maximum security.
Interview with Nika Kurdiani, CEO of Space International & Deputy CEO of TBC Bank Group PLC, and Giorgi Kapanadze, CPO at Space International.
In October 2020, following the neobank’s success in Georgia, TBC continued to expand regionally and launched a neobank in Uzbekistan. Due to Uzbekistan’s data residency laws; however, the new entity couldn’t be launched on Mambu and was set up on a core banking system that runs on-premise.
TBC, in a way, created its own competitor in Georgia.
The on-premise delivery model was creating overhead for support and required costly ongoing maintenance. By and large, the platform was unable to address a modern digital bank’s demands of availability and scalability.
“One of the things that was so important for us was to create one cross-border digital banking platform of all these disjointed services,” says Giorgi Kapanadze, CPO at Space International. “We had excellent experience with Mambu in Georgia, and decided to find a way to migrate TBC UZ to the cloud platform. Unlike its competitors, Mambu is capital-light, and not infrastructure heavy. With a simple subscription service, we get access to all the features and capabilities we need.”
Both challengers continued to grow and TBC saw an opportunity to launch Space International, the first regional cross-border digital banking platform, that would enable it to expand internationally.
Space International provides all modules and systems required to roll out a greenfield digital bank or to be integrated into an existing ecosystem. Its built-in digital product portfolio enables fast market rollout and continued delivery of new features and improvements.
With its flexible composable architecture, we have been able to build and launch from scratch in just eight months and are primed to scale up our offering.
TBC Bank Group PLC is a public limited company registered in England and Wales and the parent company of JSC TBC Bank. Together with its subsidiaries, TBC Bank is a leading universal bank in Georgia with a total market share of 38.4% of customer loans and 40.1% of customer deposits as of 30 September 2021.
TBC PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. It is also a member of the FTSE4Good Index Series and the MSCI United Kingdom Small Cap Index.
