Early on in the company’s inception, the team at Boost Bank knew it needed a new solution to manage its growing API gateway (apigw) infrastructure in the Boost eWallet app while maintaining compliance with the Central Bank of Malaysia’s strict regulatory requirements. Boost Bank’s existing API management solution needed to be able to support its rapid expansion, especially as its architecture became more complex. "Before Kong, managing multiple APIs, particularly in microservices architectures, wasn't easy," explains CEO Fozia Amanulla. "It was challenging to handle different API versions, monitor traffic, and enforce security consistently across various services."

The team also needed a new solution to enable scalability and improve performance, especially during high traffic spikes. Additionally, as Boost Bank grew, the team knew they needed to increase focus on efficiency and automation.

After evaluating multiple leading API management solutions, Boost Bank selected Kong as its new API platform of choice. The team at Boost Bank saw that, with Kong, they would be able to enhance their customers’ digital experience with faster and more reliable mobile banking and real-time account information and transactions. They would also be able to support their overall business innovation by reducing the amount of time needed to release new banking features and have greater agility to respond to market changes.

After making the selection, Boost Bank implemented Kong's API platform as the cornerstone of its digital banking infrastructure. The team’s implementation of Kong included three key pillars: Centralized API Management, Security and Compliance Control, and Automation. First, they established Kong as the centralized API gateway for all customer and partner integrations, implementing standardized rate limiting and traffic control measures. This gateway provides logical segregation between customer and partner traffic, enabling enhanced observability and maintaining service quality standards.

For security and compliance, the bank uses Kong's OpenID Connect (OIDC) plugin to manage workforce identity and access management, implementing fine-grained authorization at the API level. They enhanced their security posture with robust encryption controls that meet and exceed regulatory requirements. Third, the team uses Kong decK for configuration-as-code and an end-to-end Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CICD) pipeline to automate their API gateway changes, significantly reducing manual intervention and potential errors.

One of Boost Bank’s key business priorities is enabling innovation. As a mobile-first bank, staying ahead of the competition to provide the best possible customer experience ability is crucial to the bank’s growth and success. Using Kong, the team at Boost Bank has implemented DevSecOps and automated their CICD pipeline to accelerate their deployment cycle, enabling multiple releases per day. Now, almost 80% of their infrastructure is provisioned through code. This has greatly accelerated their time-to-market for new features while maintaining rigorous security standards. The automated infrastructure has also reduced configuration errors and improved audit capabilities, crucial advantages in the highly regulated banking sector. “Having a cloud-native microservice-based architecture enables the business to scale with customer growth, allowing us to launch new products at a faster rate. We also focused on infrastructure automation and optimizing infrastructure utilization to reduce operation costs as we scaled,” says Amanulla.

Using Kong has also enabled Boost Bank to deliver superior digital banking experiences to its customers while maintaining robust security. Their customers now experience real-time account information and transactions, faster mobile banking performance, and seamless integration with third-party financial services. And with the team regularly releasing new banking features, their customers’ experience will only get better. By implementing centralized access control and improved monitoring capabilities, Boost Bank has also enhanced its security posture, to both maintain compliance with regulatory requirements and provide customers with peace of mind.

Kong provides a seamless API Integration platform for creating, securing, and managing APIs. Leveraging Kong’s API Gateway, Boost Bank has launched multiple partner-focused savings jars called ‘Special Jars’ with minimal manual configuration required for setup. These Special Jars provide varying interest rates, effectively reaching Boost Bank’s target segments while driving deposits.

Kong enables the creation of microservices by allowing Boost Bank to decouple applications into smaller, manageable services. This decentralized development makes it easier for different teams within the bank technology team to work on specific parts of the bank's infrastructure without bottlenecks.