About FinecoBank
FinecoBank, an Italian bank specializing in online brokerage and the #1 bank in Italy according to a 2024 Forbes survey, leverages NATS for transaction messaging and market data management across European and US exchanges, enabling efficient order flow processing with simplified administration and future cloud integration capabilities.
Overview
FinecoBank is Italy’s leading online brokerage bank, processing transactions and managing data flow for its online trading system across European and US exchanges. After 20+ years of using TIBCO Rendezvous (RV) messaging infrastructure, Fineco needed to modernize its messaging operations while maintaining the reliability and performance critical to financial services.
Challenges
FinecoBank needed to effectively manage transactions and data flow for its online trading system while addressing several critical operational challenges:
- Modernize messaging system to address developer and customer needs
- Replace TIBCO Rendezvous with an open source/cloud-native messaging system due to system administration issues
- Enable faster innovation and future cloud integration capabilities
- Maintain compliance and liability standards required for international banking operations
- Deeply integrated legacy system that required careful migration planning
Why NATS
FinecoBank replaced its TIBCO Rendezvous infrastructure with NATS, an open-source, cloud-native messaging platform. NATS met all of Fineco’s requirements while providing a simpler, more maintainable solution for the future.
- Open source, cloud-native messaging & communications platform
- Scalable, low latency & high availability system eliminating the need for multiple specialized tools/middleware
- Simple to migrate, use, and deploy – lightweight, fast, secure & compliant
- Familiar design paradigm – subject-based architecture similar to TIBCO Rendezvous
- Comprehensive feature set covering request/reply, queue subscriptions, guaranteed message delivery, and wide language support
Technical Benefits
- Subject-based messaging with design similarities to TIBCO Rendezvous for smooth migration
- Centralized message broker providing better control over message flow and application rates
- JetStream for persistent messages, “fire and forget” messages, and queue groups
- Low-effort system administration and maintenance
- Cloud-agnostic integration capabilities for multi-cloud readiness
- Secure messaging with compliance features for international banking requirements
Results
NATS enabled Fineco to maintain a two-cluster system (one each for backend and frontend applications), all managed on premises in Milan, with future plans for cloud integration.
- Ease of migration and administration: The migration from RV to NATS was smooth and easy due to design similarities; both are subject based with similar design paradigms.
- Flexibility and scalability: NATS is used for transaction messaging as well as market data, demonstrating its potential for further integration into different bank operations.
- Efficiency and readiness: With NATS, the bank improved operational efficiency and readiness for future technological integrations and advancements.
- Multi-cloud choice: NATS positioned the bank for the future with its cloud-agnostic integration capabilities.
- Data persistence: The bank’s backend applications widely use JetStream for persistent messages, “fire and forget” messages and queue groups.
- Improved developer productivity: Using NATS streamlined developer workflow due to design similarities between RV and NATS.
