Modernizing at scale: how Bank of Central Asia (BCA) is transforming mobile and internet banking with Tyk
Zero downtime
while scaling to over 50 million daily API calls
Faster onboarding
and API management for 200 developers
Reduced latency
for mobile banking transactions
Region
APAC
Sector
Banking
Product
Tyk Self-Managed
Why Tyk?
Faced with exponential growth in digital banking usage, BCA’s internal API gateway began to show its limits. Latency and performance bottlenecks risked impacting core banking services, especially mobile banking, where user expectations are highest. BCA embraced the opportunity to modernize its internet and mobile banking platforms, going beyond technical improvements to enhance everything from business processes to user experiences.
During a comprehensive vendor analysis, Tyk stood out thanks to its performance, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness. The platform’s ability to support micro-gateway architecture, ease of on-premises deployment, and intuitive interface made it the clear choice for BCA’s modernization team.
At a glance
Company
BCA is Indonesia’s largest private bank, offering financial services, digital banking, and corporate solutions.
bca.co.id
Key features used
As Indonesia’s largest private bank, BCA is at the forefront of digital banking innovation. To meet increasing demands and modernize its platforms, BCA turned to Tyk’s scalable, self-managed enterprise deployment to manage vital API traffic across core banking systems for over 30 million users, with full control and performance delivered across two on-prem data centres.
The problem
BCA’s internal API gateway was struggling to handle the scale and speed of modern digital banking. With more than 1.5 billion transactions per month, and a peak traffic rate of around one million API calls per 15 minutes, even minor latency or downtime could degrade customer experience across BCS’s mobile and internet banking platforms.
With over 30 million users relying on these critical channels, BCA needed an API gateway that could handle massive transaction volumes efficiently. It also needed a solution that could support a complex on-prem environment, improve availability, and comply with strict regulatory standards. In addition, BCA wanted an API gateway that was lightweight but powerful, with accessible analytics and logs. Tyk ticked every box, as well as suiting the bank’s budget.
The role of Tyk
BCA deployed Tyk fully on-premises across two Jakarta-based data centres, establishing a central API gateway to serve both frontend and internal systems. It is using Tyk’s multi data center bridge (MDCB) for centralized API control across distributed environments, with four Tyk gateways in total. This approach ensured performance control, data sovereignty, and security compliance, all of which are critical in the heavily regulated banking sector, while also delivering user interface and experience enhancements.
The modernization team began by migrating mobile banking workloads to Tyk. With smooth and collaborative support from Tyk, they successfully handled the transition across the architecture, security, and operations teams. The focus was on internal APIs supporting the backend infrastructure powering the bank’s internet and mobile banking applications, all of which BCA migrated to Tyk.
Tyk’s flexible micro-gateway model allowed teams to selectively expose APIs, giving granular control over what was published and when. This is a key advantage during phased migrations from legacy systems, as BCA discovered, moving around 200 APIs entirely at its own pace, in line with its modernization strategy.
Edhy Wilieyanto, BCA’s API Gateway Lead, who led the technical implementation, was impressed with Tyk’s flexibility, commenting:
“We love the ability to choose exactly which APIs are published through the gateway; it gives us fine-grained control without complexity.”
The BCA team has also praised Tyk’s intuitive dashboard and rich analytics logs.
The resolution
The migration to Tyk delivered significant, measurable improvements to performance, scalability, and user experiences, delivering the flexible deployment and local control that was critical to BCA. Benefits include:
- Reduced latency for mobile banking transactions
- Zero downtime while scaling to over 50 million daily API calls
- Faster onboarding and API management for 200 developers
- Improved monitoring and control through rich dashboards and logs
By using Tyk, BCA was able to achieve the high scalability and consistent uptime it required for its critical systems with high dependencies, as well as strong buffering and database support for handling high traffic transactional flows. Almost 1,000 micro-apps now go through Tyk and around 200 developers use it directly, while some 2,000 additional developers interact with the system in total.
BCA’s API and Modernization Architect, Andry Satria, comments:
“Tyk’s simplicity, scalability, and high availability made it the right fit for a bank with our scale and needs.”
The future
With mobile banking fully transitioned and performing at scale, BCA is now focused on migrating nearly 2,300 additional APIs, covering both legacy systems and customer-facing channels. The team is also currently integrating Tyk into its CI/CD workflows to support continuous delivery. This is enabling teams to test, deploy and monitor APIs in real-time.
BCA’s modernization goals extend beyond technical architecture to include UX, business processes, and operational agility. Tyk plays a fundamental role in achieving all of this and more.
Related customer stories
SmarTone
Rouvy
Kalamuna
Start for free
Get a demo
Ready to get started?
You can have your first API up and running in as little as 15 minutes. Just sign up for a Tyk Cloud account, select your free trial option and follow the guided setup.