After more than two decades supporting banks in their digital transformation, today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Latinia.

The financial sector has changed profoundly in recent years. Digitalization has accelerated the relationship between banks and their customers, and real time has become the new industry standard.

Today we know that the real difference is no longer just about communicating faster, but about communicating at the right moment — with intelligence applied to decision-making.

In this context, we felt it was time for our company to evolve in order to better reflect the role we play today within banks’ communication ecosystems.

This evolution takes shape through a new brand identity, a new web experience, and a renewed company vision that better represents who we are today and where we are heading.

Evolving without losing our essence

As we approached this evolution, one thing was clear: we did not want to break with our history.

From the beginning, the goal was to preserve key elements of Latinia’s DNA — remaining faithful to the same vision while expanding our focus to better reflect how we address the challenges banks face today.

Visually, significant changes have been introduced in form, composition, typography, and the graphic system in order to modernize our visual expression. At the same time, our color palette preserves the brand’s characteristic tones — blue and orange — evolving into a richer and more adaptable range designed to work clearly across digital environments.

This system allows every asset — from presentations to digital products — to express our brand in a consistent and recognizable way.

An identity designed for the future of banking

We have modernized our brand image and expanded Latinia’s visual system by introducing new graphic resources, typographic hierarchies, and reusable components that allow us to maintain a consistent identity across all our digital touchpoints.

More than a simple redesign, this is a technological identity that better reflects how we understand banking communications today and the vision we aim to lead in the market.

In the words of our CRO, Francesc Perez: “Today we enter a new stage as a company — more mature, more established, and ready to take on even greater challenges. This evolution is not simply a change of image, but a way for Latinia to better express who we are, what we do, and where we are heading. With this change, we wanted to better reflect the role Latinia plays today within banks’ technology architecture and bring clarity to the challenges we help solve.”

A new web experience designed for greater clarity

With this objective in mind, our new website has been created with a clear purpose: to build an identity and a narrative aligned with what the market expects and needs — where precision, support, and trust are essential.

We introduce a space designed to connect our products with the real challenges facing digital banking today — clearer, more direct, and easier to explore.

Among the improvements, the site architecture has been reorganized so that exploring our solutions and use cases becomes more intuitive. We have also made exclusive content available — including case studies, product guides, and use cases — to help visitors better understand how our technology addresses real banking challenges and to contribute to greater knowledge across the market.

The new website also reflects Latinia’s evolution and the vision driving this new chapter — a vision we will continue to unveil over the coming weeks.

Where banking operations become intelligent decisions

Our new identity also reflects a broader vision — one that introduces a new way of understanding banking.

For us, Latinia is the point where data, banking operations, and business and technological challenges converge to become intelligent decisions.

This logic is present both in our design and in our value proposition. Our goal has always been to help banks transform transactional information into decisions that strengthen their relationship with customers.

Today, we articulate this vision through a new strategic category that better defines what we do: Decision-Centric Banking, where banking communication stops being purely informative and becomes a strategic decision-making tool for the bank.

A brand for Latinia’s next stage

For years we have helped accelerate communication between banks and their customers. Today, we want to help them make better decisions at the moments that truly matter.

This new identity and company vision will accompany us into the next stage of Latinia.

A stage in which we will continue working alongside our clients to build banking relationships that are more intelligent, more secure, and more relevant.

La entrada Today we begin a new chapter se publicó primero en Latinia.

During the past few months, several Latin American media outlets and also global publications have converged on the same idea: banking is entering a technological phase where speed alone is no longer enough. The rise of real time payments, the push to reduce cash usage, the need for proactive security, and the emergence of smart frictionless strategies are reshaping how financial institutions must operate and how they relate to their users.

Within this discussion, outlets such as El País and Forbes, along with regional leaders like Revista Summa, Plataforma Denaria, America Retail, ComputerWeekly  and ACIS Colombia, have sought expert voices and analysis to explain this shift.

Latinia’s presence in several of these media conversations reflects not recognition, but a sign of something broader: critical transactional infrastructure, real time alerts, and operational reliability have become central topics on the public banking agenda.

This article brings together those appearances and organizes the key messages we shared throughout the year. Ultimately, it offers Latinia’s view of 2025 through the media where we took part.

Smart Frictionless: a new trust logic for immediacy

One of the main threads of the year was the need to rethink the balance between speed and security in real time payments. Across eleven publications in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Central America, Latinia took part in a discussion that went beyond the idea of a “fast transaction” to focus on how to protect operations that take place in seconds.

The discussion revolved around a concept that began to gain traction in outlets such as ACIS, Economista Colombia, Noti.mx and Revista Summa: the traditional frictionless model is no longer enough. Immediacy calls for an additional layer of judgment. This is where the idea of the smart pause comes in: a brief, data driven moment designed to reinforce the perception of security without disrupting the flow of the process.

This pause is not designed as a slowdown, but as a discreet resource that appears only when it makes sense: to anticipate hesitation, validate unusual behavior, or prevent risk. In outlets such as Mercado y Tendencias and Portal ERP, this perspective was interpreted as a cultural shift in the relationship between banks and users: absolute speed gives way to a model where protection becomes a natural part of the experience.

Contextual relevance: communicating only when it matters

The discussion around smart frictionless led to a broader concept: the value of timing. In an ecosystem where banks, fintechs, and new digital players coexist, user attention is a limited resource, and communication shifts from a volume driven mechanism to one based on precision.

In outlets such as  Canales TI, we examined the need to intervene only when a message truly adds clarity or supports the user at a critical point in the process. It is not about increasing the number of interactions, but about using data, context, and recent behavior so that each one has a clear purpose. This is where models such as Next Best Action gain relevance as the conceptual foundation for truly contextual communication.

AI as the decision making layer: the technical explanation the media were looking for

The natural question after discussing contextual precision was: what technology makes it possible to operate at that level of accuracy?

Both América Retail and Forbes Colombia turned to Latinia to explain how artificial intelligence is no longer a supporting tool and has become the layer that anticipates patterns, detects risk, and adapts banking communication in real time.

The press did not limit itself to quoting statements. It also adopted a conceptual framework: AI does not act arbitrarily, but interprets context to respond at the exact right moment, a critical factor in a banking environment where every second can change the outcome of a transaction.

Digital payments and financial inclusion: a region in structural transition

Outlets such as  El País, Computer Weekly and Denaria devoted significant space to analyzing how Latin America is moving toward more accessible, agile, and interoperable payment systems. From this perspective, Latinia took part in a discussion that goes beyond digitalization itself: financial inclusion.

In Mexico, the debate around lower fees and regulatory momentum revealed a complex reality. The country remains a cash intensive economy, and the pace of digitalization is uneven across different segments. The most significant gap lies within the business middle class, a key driver of economic development that still faces barriers to adopting electronic payments at scale.

At the same time, systems such as Pix in Brazil, CoDi in Mexico, Dimo in Argentina, and BreB in Colombia became established as engines of inclusion. Their growth highlighted a recurring point in media discussions: infrastructure matters. Only with high availability platforms is it possible to bring millions of people and small businesses into the system who still depend on cash.

Immediacy, fraud risk, and real time trust

As real time payments became the norm across the region, media coverage naturally shifted toward an unavoidable issue: the rise of fraud. Iupana, Mobile Time, and other specialized outlets published in depth reports quantifying the scale of the problem:

• 70% increase in fraud linked to Pix in Brazil during 2024
• 90% of cybercrime cases in Peru associated with digital wallets

To interpret these trends, several journalists turned to Latinia as a technical source. The recurring question in interviews was always the same: how do you protect a transaction that moves as fast as the fraud attempt itself?

In this context, real time alerts took on a strategic role. Not as just another channel, but as a structural protection mechanism. The ability to intervene within milliseconds before a transaction becomes irreversible was seen as an essential tool to prevent losses and strengthen user trust.

Proactive alerts do not only respond. They anticipate. When the system detects an abnormal pattern, the notification can trigger a verification, temporarily block the operation, or prompt immediate contact with the bank. This dynamic, highlighted in Mobile Time, reinforced the idea that critical communication is now a core part of banking security.

Resilient infrastructure: a requirement for real time operations

The rise of instant payment systems and the growing exposure to fraud revealed another critical dimension of the challenge: infrastructure. In outlets such as Extra, Latinia addressed the need for systems capable of operating reliably even during demand spikes, isolated outages, or critical service moments.

Guaranteed delivery protocols, redundant architectures, and business continuity mechanisms were framed as essential elements to sustain trust across the financial ecosystem as a whole.

Proactivity and personalization: communication as a strategic layer

Beyond security, the specialized press also sought to understand how communication between banks and users is changing in an environment where everything happens in real time. In outlets such as Mobile Time, Portal ERP and IT Ahora, Latinia was consulted to explain this shift.

The discussion revolved around an idea repeated across several articles: the banking notification stops being just a message and becomes an action.

An action that informs, validates, anticipates, corrects, or even influences high value decisions such as retention or product adoption. The press highlighted that the key is not to send more alerts, but to trigger only those that respond to a specific context, anomaly, or meaningful behavior. The message stops being content and becomes a contextual intervention.

Conclusion: a system learning to operate at the user’s speed

The overall picture drawn from these 38 media appearances points to a clear convergence: Latin American banking is moving into a model where immediacy, protection, and applied intelligence must operate as a single system.

Within this interconnected ecosystem, Latinia’s presence in the public conversation reflects the value of a technical perspective that has accompanied this transition from the inside. Not as an external observer, but as part of the quiet infrastructure that supports real time payments, decisions, and alerts.

This is precisely where the media found their interest: in understanding how banking operates when real time is no longer an aspiration and becomes a structural condition.

For Latinia, this media year does not represent visibility, but perspective: confirmation that banking across the region is advancing toward a model where interpreting context and acting at the right moment is no longer a differentiator, but a fundamental requirement for digital trust.

La entrada The technological direction of banking according to the media se publicó primero en Latinia.

Positioned in a city known for its educational institutions and tech-forward mindset, the new office is poised to become a center of excellence for software development and customer service. This Colombian location complements the company’s existing IT team based in Barcelona, Spain, a city globally recognized as a tech and innovation hub.

Latinia boasts representatives catering to customers in Central, Latin, and North America, as well as Europe and the UK. This diverse representation underscores Latinia’s commitment to understanding and meeting the unique needs of each market. The Manizales office will play a pivotal role in this, offering localized support and services to a global clientele.

Inauguration Day: A Celebration of Growth and Diversity

The inauguration of the Manizales office was a festive and significant event, attended by team members from various locations. It symbolized not only the expansion of Latinia but also its growing influence in the tech world. The event featured insights into the company’s future plans, emphasizing innovation, customer-centric services, and a commitment to bridging technological gaps worldwide.

Latinia’s expansion into Manizales marks a new chapter in our journey towards becoming a beacon of technological innovation and customer service excellence. By combining the expertise of its teams in Barcelona and Manizales, Latinia is well-positioned to tackle new challenges and seize opportunities in the ever-evolving global tech landscape.

This opening is a testament to the company’s vision of global connectivity, innovation, and service excellence. With a robust presence in key markets around the world, Latinia is set to redefine the boundaries of technology and customer service in the years to come.

About Latinia

Latinia stands at the vanguard of banking communication technology, offering a suite of products that seamlessly blend innovation with customer-centricity. Our Subscription Engine, Critical Events Gateway and our groundbreaking NBA (Next Best Action) exemplify this ethos, providing banks with tools that not only streamline operational processes but also transform customer interactions into real-time engaging experiences. These solutions, backed by Latinia’s two decades of expertise in software development for major banks, are about creating connections. With capabilities ranging from real-time analysis of financial events to secure management of critical notifications, Latinia’s products are redefining the landscape of banking communications, ensuring that every interaction is secure, relevant, and impactful.

La entrada Latinia Inaugurates New Office in Manizales, Colombia: Expanding Global Reach in Tech and Innovation se publicó primero en Latinia.

Introduction

The rapidly evolving digital landscape has fundamentally transformed the banking industry. Today’s customers expect personalized, instant, and seamless experiences from their financial institutions.

Two powerful tools that are helping banks to meet and exceed these expectations are Marketing Automation and Real-Time Analytics. While they serve distinct functions, understanding how they interact can unlock a wealth of benefits for your organization.

Incorporating new digital tools can be advantageous to automating certain tasks and generally improving the efficiency of the services offered.

Banks can use marketing automation platforms and software to perform repetitive daily tasks, like sending emails, push notifications, or social media posts. On the other hand, real-time analytics use real-time customer transactional activity and customer insights to personalize engagement across all channels.

Marketing automation: the proactive powerhouse

Think of marketing automation as an all-seeing, ever-ready aide, breathing life into your marketing strategy. It streamlines, automates, and quantifies marketing tasks, promoting operational efficiency and accelerating revenue growth.

The goal of marketing automation is to optimize marketing efforts, enhance customer engagement, and drive conversions, but in the banking sector, we can also use marketing automation to:

• Streamline Customer Onboarding: Automating welcome emails, account setup instructions, and relevant documentation.
• Lead Generation and Nurturing: Marketing automation helps banks capture leads through various channels, such as website forms, landing pages, or online campaigns. These leads can be nurtured with automated email campaigns to deliver targeted content based on their interests and behaviors.
• Cross-Selling and Upselling: Marketing automation enables banks to identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities by analyzing customer data and automatizing targeted offers and recommendations based on the customer’s financial needs and preferences.
• Customer Engagement and Retention: Banks can use marketing automation to send personalized messages, relevant content, and timely reminders, for example, automated birthday greetings, account balance notifications, or legal communications.
• Customer Feedback and Surveys: Automation can facilitate the collection of customer feedback and conduct surveys to gather insights and improve customer satisfaction. For example, banks can automate the distribution of surveys after specific interactions or transactions.

Each customer’s actions on the company’s digital channels can be used as triggers to generate a step-by-step experience, introducing the user to a guided customer journey.

What are real-time experiences?

On the other hand, real-time analytics, as its name indicates, refers to collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data as it is generated in real-time, providing immediate insights and allowing informed decision-making.

In the banking industry, real-time analytics involves continuously monitoring and analyzing data from various sources, such as transactions, wire transfers, and ATM transactions. This enables banks to proactively serve their customers with real-time experiences while the customer is living his life in the real world.

As with marketing automation, real-time analytics allows banks to offer better customer services, increasing engagement. These are some examples:

• Fraud Detection and Prevention: Real-time analytics can identify and alert about potentially fraudulent activities, such as unauthorized transactions or detect suspicious patterns in real time. Banks can take immediate action to mitigate risks and protect their customers’ assets by having this information in real time.
• Personalized Customer Experiences: With real-time analytics, banks can better understand customer behavior and their preferences in real time and deliver customized offers, recommendations, and tailored experiences to customers.
• Customer Service and Support: Real-time analytics can also support banks in providing proactive customer service by identifying issues, resolving them promptly, and ensuring a positive customer experience.
• Operational Efficiency: Not all the benefits of real-time analytics relates to customers. Real-time analytics can also significantly help optimize operational processes within banks. Banks can identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and make data-driven decisions to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
• Regulatory Compliance: Real-time analytics can assist banks in meeting regulatory requirements. By continuously monitoring data and transactions, banks can promptly detect and report any potential compliance violations, ensuring adherence to regulatory guidelines.

Each transaction, or moments as we like to call them at Latinia, can be an opportunity for the bank to be proactive with its customers, provide useful information, advice, and even sell to the client.

Moments vs. customer journey

In marketing automation, a customer journey is like going on a hike with invisible walls, where the customer is “forced” to follow the path the bank created to reach its objective. It limits the customer’s options to what has been predefined by the bank in its marketing automation tool.

In comparison, with real-time analytics, each step the customer takes during the hike can be considered a moment or micro-moment. In this case, there are no invisible walls; customers can go right, straight, or left as they wish.

In one case, the customer must follow the predefined steps the bank configured in their marketing automation tool, hoping they will convert at one point in their lifecycle.

However, with real-time transactional analysis, customers are free to live their life how they see fit, and the bank can be relevant in real time when the client needs it, not when it feels like it’s a good time to send an offer.

Same objectives, different triggers

While marketing automation offers a variety of solutions when the bank’s customer is present in the bank’s digital channel, real-time transactional analytics allows banks to take advantage of when the client is not present in the bank’s digital channels.

One important question to consider is:

How much time does a bank’s customer spend on average in the bank’s digital channels?

And the answer is: just a few minutes!

How can banks then take advantage of the rest of the day when customers live in the real world, making purchases, investing, or facing financial struggles?

One of the big differentiators between marketing automation solutions and Latinia’s real-time analytics solutions are the touch points or triggers.

The Power Duo: Real-Time Intelligence Fuelling Automated Actions

The secret sauce is not choosing between marketing automation and real-time analytics – it’s merging their strengths. Latinia’s unique product suite – Next Best Action (NBA), Subscription Engine, and Gateway – merges marketing automation with real-time analytics.

Latinia’s NBA, for example, utilizes banking transactions and customer intelligence to generate timely and personalized actions, ensuring banks can meet customer needs proactively and effectively.

For instance, imagine a customer buying a trip online. With Latinia’s solution, the bank can automatically propose its travel insurance based on real-time data, ensuring the offer is relevant and timely.

This degree of personalization not only enhances customer experiences but also paves the way for cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

But Latinia doesn’t stop at just providing timely notifications. It can also provide seamless integration with classic marketing automation software. By seamlessly connecting with established marketing automation tools, Latinia opens up a realm of possibilities for banks to enhance their customer engagement strategies.

For instance, when Latinia detects a significant customer activity, it can automatically enroll the customer into a targeted workflow in the marketing automation software. This workflow could include a series of follow-up messages, offers, or personalized content designed to nurture the relationship with the customer and provide them with further assistance or incentives.

Furthermore, Latinia can help enrich customer profiles within the marketing automation tool by updating relevant real-time information. For example, if a customer’s financial situation changes due to a major life event, such as getting married or buying a home, Latinia can promptly update the customer’s profile with this information. This enables the marketing automation system to adjust its approach accordingly, tailoring future interactions to suit the customer’s evolving needs and preferences.

The seamless integration of Latinia with marketing automation not only streamlines the communication process but also allows banks to deliver hyper-personalized experiences to their customers. By leveraging real-time data and insights, banks can create targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with each individual, fostering stronger customer loyalty and satisfaction.

La entrada Latinia vs. Marketing Automation se publicó primero en Latinia.

This knowledge of the sector and extensive experience in the development of technological solutions for banking favor the constant evolution of Latinia’s products, with the aim of accompanying its clients in their digital transformation processes. This guidance goes beyond the traditional sales cycle based on the validation of the quality and technical feasibility of the project, since the decision to implement a particular technological solution is, above all, a business decision. “At Latinia we not only disseminate the technical and functional benefits of our products, but we also help our clients to measure their economic impact,” explains Francesc Pérez, Chief Revenue at Latinia.

Measuring the economic benefit of Latinia’s products

To offer this advice, Latinia provides its clients with a tool to prepare their business case in order to obtain three fundamental pieces of information: the profit generated, the return on investment (ROI) and how long it will take to recover the capital invested or payback on the implementation of products.

“Latinia customers have already successfully developed business cases and know the economic benefit of applying our solutions. The business case is also a useful tool for new customers, as it shows them the ROI they will obtain by implementing our products and allows them to assess the payback,” highlights Latinia’s Chief Revenue Officer.

Cyber fraud, system obsolescence, ineffective customer communications, increased competitive pressure from Fintechs… Solving the most pressing banking challenges is part of Latinia’s mission, says Francesc Pérez: “The super-specialization of our solutions explains why we obtain positive data when conducting business cases. We have decades of knowledge of the industry, which allows us to anticipate its needs, and our own philosophy as software developers puts us in the best position to meet them. Our solutions evolve to help banking overcome the challenges of technological development.”

“The efficiency in exploiting Latinia’s technological solutions, as well as being reflected in quantitative data such as that derived from the preparation of business cases, can be explained by the advantages that banks obtain by implementing Latinia’s products, which put them a step ahead of the competition,” he concludes.

La entrada In the face of banking’s challenges, Latinia solutions se publicó primero en Latinia.

As Francesc Pérez, Chief Revenue Officer of Latinia, explains “as technology solution providers, we can no longer limit ourselves to merely promoting the functional and technical benefits of our products, we must also guide and help our clients to measure the economic impact of their decision to implement our products, whether in terms of generating business, cost reduction, operational efficiency, return on investment, among others”.

This exercise is not only carried out when deciding to purchase a new product, but is also used to measure the economic impact of a technological solution already in operation, to measure its degree of use, and to determine whether its potential is being fully exploited to optimize impact on the business.

As a provider of real-time decision-making and communication software for banking, Latinia didn’t want to abandon its customers when faced with this challenge. According to Francesc Pérez, “our mission is to help our clients exploit our products in the most efficient way possible and in order to do so, we must be able to measure their performance in business terms. We don’t just solve technical problems: we advise our customers on how to exploit our products in the most efficient way to maximize their impact”.

What can I get from Latinia’s products?

“How much will Latinia cost me? What impact would it have on my business? What benefits would it generate for the bank? How and when would that happen? Are we taking advantage of all the product’s functionalities and extracting the maximum benefit? What impact would it have in terms of business to use the product differently? Our clients ask themselves these questions, and as a company we have the capacity to answer them based on a business case methodology, the result of years of experience”, explains Juliana Ortiz, Head of Customer Success at Latinia.

The preparation of a business case is not solely an accounting exercise, but rather the goal is to obtain a report of high strategic value, which measures the return on investment (ROI) made and facilitates decision making. “Based on this objective, in Latinia we have a tool to develop business cases on our products and services. This tool unites the experience we’ve gained over more than 20 years working with clients in 14 countries as software providers for the financial sector, so its use is not only a theoretical exercise, but yields a realistic response regarding the economic impact of the decision to purchase Latinia’s products,” explains Francesc Pérez.

Decisions based on data, not assumptions

The tool created by Latinia is based on approximately 100 variables that, through close collaboration between the bank and Latinia, automatically generates the business case as data is entered into the system. “With our business case, the bank will find out three fundamental pieces of information about our products: the profit generated, the ROI and how long it will take to recover invested capital or payback,” explains Juliana Ortiz. “In many cases, the client themselves are not clear on how to prepare a business case, or have a lot of difficulty in finding a certain piece of information that is key to its preparation. This tool provides a proven methodology that guides the client in its preparation, based on business intelligence gathered over many years from many clients, which allows for conclusive results, speeding up the decision-making process,” she adds.

The tool is helping Latinia’s clients to measure the economic impact of the decision to migrate Latinia’s products from their current on-premises infrastructure, to a cloud infrastructure. The results are clear. In this respect, Juliana Ortiz explains that “in one of our business cases, very significant data related to the efficiency of the new platform was reported: a 30% reduction in the costs associated with the infrastructure, an 80% reduction in product update times, as well as an increase in the quality of service to end customers by reducing processing time by 20%”.

“Through this tool, Latinia offers our clients all of our business experience and specialized knowledge, which allows us to go beyond the traditional client-technical supplier relationship. In this way, we provide advice aimed at applying best practices, and promoting the efficient use of our products to maximize the impact on our clients’ businesses,” concludes Francesc Pérez.

La entrada What economic impact do Latinia’s products have? se publicó primero en Latinia.

Cloud, Clients and Channels define this project. So it was described by @Kyra Arcia, Head of Marketing and Innovation at @BancoBolivariano to comment the bank’s latest project, where they have relied on @Latinia as a critical notification event-gateway solution. “We are in the customer’s moment; he decides how and through which channels he wants to be served. He is in command, and we are responsible for identifying his communication needs”.

Banco Bolivariano, the 5^th bank in Ecuador, based in the city of Guayaquil, understood that today, more than ever, “our clients live in permanent connected experiences and any client no longer compares you with other banks, but with the leaders of other industries such as Amazon or Apple “.

“This led us to search in the market for a solution that was aligned with our vision, was adaptable and did not end in a technological development with significant workloads. The functionality that Latinia offered us fit perfectly with the bank’s digital transformation roadmap”, commented Arcia from the Ecuadorian bank.

Also understanding that alerts are one of the main “touch points” in the customer experience, the evolutionary roadmap of the bank determined that it was necessary to bet on a platform that integrates the 360º view of the customer in terms of their relationship with the bank, letting us to evolve the technology together with our clients. 

THE PARTNER

One of the virtues of the @Latinia’s product is the ability of the client (here understood as the bank client) to build and parameterize their own service, about what they want to be informed about (from daily balances, to transfers and deposits received, incoming payrolls, returned checks or receipt of money orders into account), when, or through which channels (push, SMS, e-mail …).

“This flexibility also gives us greater knowledge of our clients, allowing us to discover what interests them the most, what they want to be informed about, and thus anticipate their communication and content needs“, said Arcia.

“Another extremely relevant element when betting for Latinia was its high degree of specialization and experience in the financial sector, which, due to its demanding demands, require a deep knowledge of the vicissitudes and particularities of this industry, in permanent technological evolution. More than 20 clients in the region alone were an operational and implementation guarantee”. 

THE IMPLEMENTATION

If Banco Bolivariano was disruptive in something, in addition to a commitment to diversify its notification channels, it was to launch the new infrastructure on a cloud strategy, a journey where Latinia is accompanying them, starting from a cloud-ready (‘cloud-ready’), to end in a native cloud (‘cloud-native’).

“The main challenge that as the bank’s IT area we had to face before the integration was to correctly size the infrastructure needs towards a new system, even more if it was going to be deployed in the cloud. Another no less challenging issue was knowing the different Latinia integration mechanisms and adopting them according to the business strategy to define the different stages that would be applied to the project”, according to Gustavo Molina, IT Manager of the Ecuadorian bank.

“During the integration itself, the associated challenges were, on the one hand, the decoupling that the applications had to carry out for integration to the Latinia product, as well as finding a solution as agile as possible for the integration of the bank’s legacy systems” continued the IT Manager.

From Latinia, the high security and encryption standards implemented are especially noteworthy: the bank does not provide credentials to the vendor, as well as Latinia performs its administration without the need to have access by using BYOK (‘bring your own keys ‘), which highlights the security of the entire flow. Not least, it all happened with an easy and fast remote deployment, especially valued by their operations team in times of COVID-19.

On the other hand, the updates management is carried out through a ‘rolling update’ process, that is, similar to what we do as final users in the Apple Store or Google Play, that is, through packages that are self-deploying, which significantly points out the value of the product maintenance.

“Traditionally, architectures originated as internal developments grow in a fragmented, sequential way, limiting themselves to meeting specific needs at any given time, that is, architectures not prepared to handle the management of new notification channels, whose operating logic differs from more traditional channels, generating potential silos of information that fragment the 360º vision of the client, and that in the case of Banco Bolivariano they were good enough to identify from the beginning ”, according to Latinia.

Case Study – Banco Bolivariano

La entrada CASE STUDY – Banco Bolivariano (Ecuador) se publicó primero en Latinia.

Olabarria explains some of the key achievements in these past ten years, such as addressing a “very specific need” with a “highly focused” technological and market approach. Along the same lines, he adds that from the outset Latinia has had a solid belief in its opportunities and its project, after the uncertainties that arose in the market for technology companies in 2001, and also emphasizes that “to lead in innovation you have to be able to rely openly and implicitly on the collaboration of your customers and your technological partners.”

The corporate world versus the rise of mobile content

Over the past ten years, Latinia has managed to position itself as a leading software vendor of platform products for SMS banking in such a way that its products are now used to send more than 200 million financial messages each year. Olabarria explains that they started out in the SMS messaging environment before business models based on Premium rate structures even existed, which became popular through the media and TV shows, but that “at that time, our company was already focusing on the corporate sector, which was less attractive compared to the rising mobile entertainment world but where we believed we could cover more ground and make a more sustainable contribution of value over time.”

Moving in this direction, Latinia was the first company to use 2-way SMS for stock price queries: “In 1999 our company was able to see that in addition to the mass media, the corporate world was also going to be relying on texting to offer services and reach out to customers and citizens,” Olabarria notes.

An outlook of growth and expansion

In 2008 the company began its process of expansion into Latin America, where already has some outstanding customer references such as Santander Puerto Rico, Telefonica Internacional, Redeban Multicolor, the Master Card and Maestro processor in Colombia, or Banco de Bogotá, and projects to follow the same successful path in Europe this coming season.

“Although its deployment is still somewhat timid, mobile banking is revealing to us a major new approach through its use as a payment tool (and not merely as an access channel), and that’s why we’re opening up this angle for markets where the banking system is less established, such as Latin America, where on one hand the level of mobile penetration is now reaching 100%, whereas the development of the banking system is expressed in dramatically lower figures, raising the possibility of bringing in enormous pools of users who are establishing their first relationships with financial institutions and handling services and payments through their mobile handset,” he concluded.

In 2010 the company has also commenced operations in the main European markets, “although in dealing with such specific products, Latinia is going more after opportunities than markets per se, since the geographic range may turn out to be very extensive,” Olabarria explains. “At all events, the opportunity is as great in Europe as in Latin America, although here mobile banking is a much more mature and contested market. No matter how you look at it, both approaches underscore the need to be equipped with a platform product for the deployment and provision of mobile financial services, and this,” he concludes, “is the opportunity the market is offering us after 10 years of helping big corporations to adapt to these new channels.”

La entrada Latinia celebrates its 10th anniversary leading in SMS banking and riding a wave of expansion se publicó primero en Latinia.