Customer Story: alt.bank

Simpler Deployments and Feature Flagging for Fintech Firms

alt.bank is a Brazilian Fintech firm. They aim to bring financial accessibility to the Brazilian population, who traditionally lack access to financial products. 

They started with debit cards and now also focus on credit cards, underwriting, credit scores, and more.

Their product—and team—are growing and scaling fast. 

We met with Caio Gandra, an Engineering Manager at alt.bank. He works on scaling the product, manages three development squads and a QA squad, and liaises with multiple POs. 

Why Did They Need Feature Flagging?

They started building the product with an emphasis on feature toggles and feature management, but never had a dedicated tool for the job. They used tools that had some feature toggle functionality, rather than a specialised tool for feature flagging. 

For the first three years this was enough. As the product and team scaled, though, they realised that the market was much bigger and their needs were bigger. They needed a system that could scale.

The Problem: Limited Feature Flag Functionality

Their feature management process had limitations. Customers were noticing that they didn’t have the functionality they needed. It looked like the toggles weren’t working correctly. As their customer-base and needs grew, the system was strained. 

Caio and his team thought about building an in-house solution, but that comes with costs to build and maintain. And it can feel like reinventing the wheel. 

They started looking at feature flag software, with affordability being a core requirement. This is how they found Flagsmith.

The Hurdles to Changing Systems

alt.bank’s main concern was knowing whether a new system could handle their load and the high volumes of requests. We worked together on proofs of concept and made sure that their setup would be supported. 

Support was also crucial. They needed to know that if something broke, they could reach out to someone and it would get fixed. Since then, they’ve never had a major outage. And they say that “every time we reach out, we know that we can contact people.”

The Results: Simple, Continuous Deployments 

alt.bank has been using feature toggles to turn features on and off for a long time. Now they can expand usage. 

Their main project is a mobile application. They’ve been able to expand the project and make small, gradual changes in the app without having to deploy a big release or a new version. They don’t need to go through long-winded approval processes for each tiny change; they can just change the text and adjust the flag in production and it’s done. 

The flexibility and ability to continually deploy is crucial. They’re a growing startup and things change a lot. Having the flexibility for their mobile app is particularly important. 

From Monolith to Microservices

Before, alt.bank was working with a monolith architecture using a different tool. Now, they are running microservices and the whole architecture has changed.

Their previous flag management system was only compatible with mobile application flags. As they migrated to microservices, it was crucial to find a tool that could be integrated with backend systems. They needed to bring the flag management potential to the backend systems as well as the mobile application, which they were able to accomplish with Flagsmith.

If you’d like to find out more about how Flagsmith could work with your workflows, start by creating a free account, or contact us to find out more about on-premises hosting and more.