Afin Bank partners with Thought Machine and Vacuumlabs to power digital launch
UK-based start-up Afin Bank has partnered with Thought Machine and Vacuumlabs to power its new digital banking offering tailored for Africans living and working in the UK.
Afin Bank partners with Thought Machine and Vacuumlabs
Founded this year, Afin Bank plans to offer residential and buy-to-let mortgages for Africans residing in England and Wales, alongside FSCS-protected savings products for UK passport holders and African nationals from Nigeria, Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Ghana living in the UK.
The company recently obtained an Authorisation with Restrictions (AwR) banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and is now in the mobilisation stage ahead of the 2025 launch of its mortgage and savings services.
To support these initiatives, Afin Bank has secured several key partnerships. London-headquartered cloud-native banking tech vendor, Thought Machine, has been tapped for its core banking platform, Vault Core.
The selection places Afin Bank among the likes of Vietnam’s HD Bank, Australia’s Judo Bank, and ethical finance start-up Ethos, who have also recently chosen Thought Machine for their core banking needs.
Monica Velasquez, chief technology officer (CTO) at Afin Bank, explains the choice of Thought Machine was driven by its “use of Python-based smart contracts,” allowing the bank to “develop differentiated products efficiently within days,” as well as its “Kafka message data streaming” capability, which “ensures real-time data processing”.
In addition, the start-up has partnered with Slovakian fintech platform developer Vacuumlabs to support its operations and develop its customer mobile app.
Velasquez adds: “We have deployed a MACH architecture (microservices-first, APIs-first, Cloud-first, and Headless) and built an advanced technology stack with backend development in Python and Kotlin. Mobile development leveraging is via React Native and our data architecture leverages Snowflake.
“Underpinning this, with Vacuumlabs, we are utilising Temporal’s solutions for orchestration to ensure durable execution of application code, allowing reliable and resilient workflow executions to power our customer journeys.”
