Aqua Global, a financial messaging expert, has announced that iFAST Global Bank selected Aqua to underpin the launch of its new Digital Personal Banking (DPB) services – enabling the start-up bank to go live with multi-currency payments from day one.
In 2023, iFAST deployed Aquila – Aqua’s multi-channel messaging solution – to help it meet growing demands for fast, frictionless and compliant cross-border banking, with Aquila providing the core payments infrastructure needed to scale securely and with confidence. Key outcomes of the deployment include:
Multi-currency banking from day one: Using Aquila, iFAST supports nine currencies – GBP, USD, EUR, HKD, SGD, CNY, JPY, CHF and AED – allowing customers to hold, spend and move money globally. Since launch in 2022, the platform has scaled significantly while laying the foundations for phase two: transactional banking-as-a-service for corporate clients and partner banks.
End-to-end visibility and control: Aquila is integrated across iFAST’s core banking and digital platforms, giving real-time insight into payment status, sanctions screening and exceptions management within a single view. This has reduced manual intervention, improved operational resilience and accelerated issue resolution to enhance the customer experience.
Future-ready payments and compliance: Aquila delivers native connectivity to Swift and CHAPS, with built-in ISO 20022 processing to support domestic and international payments. This enables compliance with evolving payment standards, including FATF 16 and Swift CBPR+, while future-proofing iFAST’s payments infrastructure.
The partnership builds on a long-standing relationship between the two organisations, following iFAST’s acquisition of BFC Bank in 2022 – an Aqua Global customer since 2018 – with much of the same team now driving the new bank’s digital strategy.
“Our goal was to build a truly modern banking platform that could scale internationally from day one,” said Inayat Kashif, Chief Executive Officer at iFAST Global Bank. “By deploying Aquila, we were able to launch multi-currency payments on a cloud-native architecture, process growing volumes with confidence and meet evolving regulatory requirements without adding complexity. The platform has given us the flexibility to grow quickly while maintaining control and resilience – playing a key role in helping us reach profitability by our second year of operation.”
As part of this transition, iFAST migrated its existing Aqua deployment from E2Gen technology to Aquila’s cloud-native platform on AWS, enabling international payments while aligning with the bank’s cloud-first strategy and long-term technology roadmap.
“iFAST built our own core banking platform in-house, so we absolutely had the option to build a messaging layer ourselves,” Kashif added. “But Aquila already delivered the scale, modern architecture and compliance capabilities we needed and Aqua is a partner we know and trust. The team understands our business, the quality of their technology is excellent and their ongoing support has been first-class. That allowed us to focus our engineering effort where it adds the most value, while staying at the cutting edge of payments.”
Cian Fernando, CEO at Aqua Global, said: “Leading digital banks want modern, cloud-native payments infrastructure without the burden of building and maintaining it themselves. iFAST’s approach shows how engineering-led organisations can move faster by partnering with specialists and we’re proud to support its growth with a platform designed to scale as its ambitions expand.”
