Reinventing digital identity for Erste Bank Serbia

Ivana Roksandic Categories: Business Insights, Case Studies Date 23-May-2025 5 minutes to read

Erste Bank Serbia wanted to take their digital banking services to the next level and needed to modernise their digital identity system.

The challenge: Outgrowing their current proprietary identity system

As customer expectations evolved and digital adoption accelerated, Erste Bank Serbia’s proprietary digital banking solution, particularly its digital identity system, began to show its age. It lacked the flexibility, scalability, and robustness needed to support seamless digital experiences across channels.

Security expectations were rising. Regulatory landscapes were shifting. And adapting the outdated system often meant long development cycles, limited agility, and increased risk.

To overcome these challenges and lay the foundation for future innovation, Erste Bank Serbia set out to modernise its digital banking capabilities with George, a secure, scalable, and forward-looking platform developed by Erste Group. As part of this transformation, they needed a modern digital identity solution that would support next-gen digital experiences.

That’s where we came in.

The solution: The digital identity solution

George was built with a strong focus on standardisation and integration. Its architecture relies on well-designed APIs and open standards, making it easy to deploy across all Erste Group subsidiaries and adapt to local regulations in every country where the Group operates. This ensures consistency, simplifies maintenance, and speeds up regulatory compliance.

Available on both mobile and web, George delivers a secure, unified digital identity experience. Vega IT played a key role in reinforcing its backend infrastructure through the digital identity solution. We implemented APIs and strengthened security for Erste Bank Serbia.

The digital identity solution centralises and standardises authentication and authorisation across the George application suite. It also lays the foundation for PSD2 compliance, serving as the core identity and authorisation layer for both Erste Bank Serbia’s internal systems and Erste Group’s broader ecosystem.
Beyond authentication, it covers essential digital identity functions – including identity provider services, device enrollment, transaction signing, and authorisation of high-risk actions. It also gives bank employees access to an admin panel that simplifies user operations.

We didn’t stop there. To reduce deployment risks and manual effort, we modernised Erste Bank Serbia’s deployment process and automated the release pipeline. We also introduced DevOps practices to support future cloud adoption – containerisation, infrastructure-as-code, and cloud-ready deployment patterns. These improvements made applications more scalable, portable, and easier to maintain.

With these upgrades, Erste Bank Serbia has strengthened security, improved the user experience, and gained the agility needed to drive innovation in digital banking.

The results: A stronger core for a smarter digital bank

The collaboration delivered a cutting-edge digital identity solution, purpose-built to support Erste Bank’s expanding digital ecosystem. Designed for flexibility and scalability, the new system meets the high standards of modern digital banking.

It enables seamless customer onboarding, secure transaction signing, and multi-factor authentication, while keeping the experience intuitive and user-friendly across both mobile and web platforms. Customers can now interact with digital services more easily and with greater confidence.

Built on open standards and well-structured APIs, the solution integrates smoothly with existing systems and future services. It provides a future-proof foundation that supports quick adaptation to regulatory changes and evolving business needs across all Erste Group subsidiaries.

Beyond the identity solution itself, our work on modernising deployment pipelines and infrastructure brought major gains in agility. Through automation, containerisation, and infrastructure-as-code, we reduced deployment risks and enabled faster rollouts, setting the stage for cloud adoption.

Working closely with Erste Bank’s security team, we ensured the system meets all regulatory and internal security requirements. The result is a robust, compliant, and resilient identity platform that strengthens data protection and enhances the customer experience, laying the groundwork for continued digital innovation.