Марія БровінськаІсторії
18 February 2025, 11:42
2025-02-18
200 IT professionals from Raif created a mobile superapp for a million users. What's in the app, how does it make life easier, and who are they looking for in the MyRaif developer cohort?
Imagine 18 teams of IT professionals who worked tirelessly for over a year on something super-large and necessary for almost every Ukrainian. And in the end, such a product was born — a financial superapp that takes into account the most secret desires of over a million users, stands guard over interests and business, and shows an extraordinary dynamics of updates for even greater user comfort. Are you intrigued? We’ll tell you.
On February 17, Raiffeisen Bank launched a new multifunctional mobile application, MyRaif, a whole ecosystem of digital finances that adapts to each user, created by the bank’s in-house team. By the end of 2025, both applications will be available to the bank’s clients, but later MyRaif will replace Raiffeisen Online, which the developers will turn off.
dev.ua spoke with Viktor Manzar, Head of IT Solutions Implementation at Raifu, about why the need to release a new application arose, what its advantages are, and what features are already available to users today.
Imagine 18 teams of IT professionals who worked tirelessly for over a year on something super-large and necessary for almost every Ukrainian. And in the end, such a product was born — a financial superapp that takes into account the most secret desires of over a million users, stands guard over interests and business, and shows an extraordinary dynamics of updates for even greater user comfort. Are you intrigued? We’ll tell you.
On February 17, Raiffeisen Bank launched a new multifunctional mobile application, MyRaif, a whole ecosystem of digital finances that adapts to each user, created by the bank’s in-house team. By the end of 2025, both applications will be available to the bank’s clients, but later MyRaif will replace Raiffeisen Online, which the developers will turn off.
dev.ua spoke with Viktor Manzar, Head of IT Solutions Implementation at Raifu, about why the need to release a new application arose, what its advantages are, and what features are already available to users today.
Why do you need a new Raif app?
The bank began thinking about creating a new application back in 2021. The financial institution decided to replace the current Raiffeisen Online application because its development was carried out by an external contractor, and according to experts, supporting and developing its functionality would cost the bank several times more than a new one created from scratch and taking into account modern fintech trends and user expectations.
«The cost of scaling Raiffeisen Online would be eight times higher than building a new application. And adapting the old application to new conditions would take much longer,» says Victor.
Moreover, according to him, at that time Raiffeisen Online was already technologically outdated, and the bank had to catch up and get ahead of competitors' solutions.
However, due to a full-scale invasion, the project implementation timeline had to be adjusted: the bank scaled back most projects, focusing all efforts on cloud migration .
Raifu IT workers resumed work on the application in 2023 — of the six teams that launched the project in 2021, one and a half remained. «Those seven teams were teams with vendors. And then we were able to create a core team in-house,» Viktor clarifies.
Victor Manzar
200 IT workers and new rules
In 2023, the number of development teams increased to six, and in 2024, 12 more teams were hired. Currently, 18 teams are working on the MyRaif application, involving more than 200 IT specialists — a quarter of the total number of IT specialists in the bank. «We scaled in a matter of months, prepared a fairly strong foundation for this to happen technically,» said Viktor. However, notes the head of IT solutions implementation at Raif, in order to scale something that «was working before,» you need to actually launch it from scratch. «We needed specific rules of the game: who can do what, who can’t do what. And rules that can be controlled automatically. Because people sometimes make mistakes,» he says.
Thus, the teams working on MyRaif focused on two main things: validation rules and standardization of the work of analysts, testers, and developers. This approach brought results: development accelerated by 16% in 2024. «That is, we see a fairly positive trend across all teams,» Victor states.
The goal of the MyRaif app developers is to release updates every two weeks, so the teams work in two-week sprints.
«The plan is to keep releases small and deliver value to customers and the business as quickly as possible,» Victor explains. He adds, «There will be no updates every Friday. I have a rule: whoever wants to release on Friday takes a day off so that the team doesn’t have to work on the weekend.»
Currently, Raif IT engineers are working only with native development to improve and maximize the user experience to create the MyRaif application. For iOS, it is Swift, for Android — Kotlin. For service development, they use Spring Boot as the main framework. And all services are written in Java. «And under all this there is a large platform foundation. We work in a scalable environment. We have Kubernetes, Cloud, Auto Scaling,» adds Victor.
AI is on guard of convenience and security
Raif integrates advanced technologies, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to make financial management as comfortable as possible. In particular, the application has a service that uses a photo during registration to compare the photo and data in documents.
MyRaif also has an integrated AI solution to automate the test case generation process.
«We have an artifact from an analyst, from an architect, which is run through the model. Based on the acceptance criteria, it generates the described test cases that need to be tested. They do not have an advanced level, but they close routine things for now,» says Raifu, the head of IT solutions implementation.
In the near future, Raiffeisen plans to generate a code base for autotests using artificial intelligence to make life easier for autotesters and testers.
«We have a framework for writing autotests, there is a definition of what it is. This is a unit test, a contract test, we have a farm of mobile devices. This is an important part. We don’t test on emulators, but within real devices,» explains Victor.
7 top features of MyRaif that make life easier
The new Raifu app combines an intuitive interface, personalized solutions, and instant access to real-time financial instruments.
Here are the top 7 features of the new app that will make every user’s life more convenient.
Instant IBAN payments — payments are made in 10 seconds. The limit for one transaction is 100,000 UAH.
Face Liveness Detection — for access, just take a selfie, identification is instant, without entering card data.
Deposit management — this feature allows you to change deposit names, view agreements, control the balance and terms of placing funds in a few clicks.
Everything about credit cards — credit limit, minimum payment, grace period, and accrued interest — is now in one place.
Card tokenization — now you can add a card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet in seconds.
Enhanced 3D-Secure — payment verification has become even safer, which significantly reduces the risk of fraud.
Smart reminders — if registration or onboarding is not completed, MyRaif will help you not to forget about it using personalized trigger notifications.
Download the updated MyRaif app for iOS and Android .
MyRaif is hiring
Currently, the cohort of developers working on the MyRaif superapp is looking for new members. If you are looking for a job, apply for open positions to create products for people who value convenience, speed, and modern technologies in financial services.
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Нажаль елементарна операція, яка доступна на Райфі лише через додаток MyRaif - отримання переказів MoneyGram працює некоректно. Якщо коротко, то два тижня намагаюсь отримати переказ, підтримка Райфа щодня дає нові відповіді та рекомендації, які жодним чином не вирішували проблему,і наскільки я зрозумів проблема закладена при проектуванні розробниками функції. А саме за версією райфа транслітерація прізвища не співпадає з тим, що у мене вказано в закордонному паспорті, тобто відправник переказу звісно указав прізвище, як у мене вказано в закордонному паспорті але при отриманні переказу MyRaif самостійно проводить транслітерацію прізвища та на підставі різниці не виплачує переказ. Був наданих закордонний паспорт, в базі СМД вказано вірно, але я так розумію MyRaif просто не звертається до цього поля при перевірці. Та на підставі цього банк рекомендує отримати переказ в іншому банку, незважаючи, що я був клієнтом банку більше 24 років.
Нажаль елементарна операція, яка доступна на Райфі лише через додаток MyRaif - отримання переказів MoneyGram працює некоректно. Якщо коротко, то два тижня намагаюсь отримати переказ, підтримка Райфа щодня дає нові відповіді та рекомендації, які жодним чином не вирішували проблему,і наскільки я зрозумів проблема закладена при проектуванні розробниками функції. А саме за версією райфа транслітерація прізвища не співпадає з тим, що у мене вказано в закордонному паспорті, тобто відправник переказу звісно указав прізвище, як у мене вказано в закордонному паспорті але при отриманні переказу MyRaif самостійно проводить транслітерацію прізвища та на підставі різниці не виплачує переказ. Був наданих закордонний паспорт, в базі СМД вказано вірно, але я так розумію MyRaif просто не звертається до цього поля при перевірці. Та на підставі цього банк рекомендує отримати переказ в іншому банку, незважаючи, що я був клієнтом банку більше 24 років.