CAIXA Commits to IBM Z Following Unprecedented Growth

SÃO PAULO, Nov. 1, 2018

SÃO PAULO, Nov. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CAIXA, one of Brazil and Latin America's major public banks, announced their commitment to IBM Z (NYSE: IBM) as the foundation to reshape the bank's technology infrastructure, meet new data compliance regulations such as GDPR, and enable the bank's future expansions and projects.

Following growing demand to meet the public's intensifying expectations for digital services such as self-service balance transactions and the online purchase of Lottery tickets, CAIXA has invested in six IBM Z14 machines for its Brasilia datacenter, supporting São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia hubs to address the growing volume of transactions being processed daily — which represents about 80 percent of all payments processed in Brazil. Just last month, CAIXA hit a record, 2.8 billion encrypted transaction processed in one day. Another record was the almost 23 million transactions registered in CAIXA Internet Banking alone – when considering both mobile and desktop access.

"In the beginning banks were only in the branches, then in alternative channels, such as ATMs and lottery retailers, and now they have gained more speed and practicality within the mobile environment, generating ever greater numbers of access demands to CAIXA's servers," said Sergio Martins, IT Services National Manager at CAIXA. "With a strong social mission, CAIXA works continuously to provide a series of essential services to the population, growing together with digital access and the economy of the country, and offering a better experience for citizens. IBM is very pleased to offer CAIXA the IT environment they need to keep its consistent growth while focusing on social responsibility," said Joaquim Campos, Systems VP, IBM Brazil.

IBM Z is capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day. The security, high-performance and massive scale make it the ideal platform for financial institutions around the world. IBM Z is used by 93 of the world's top 100 banks and supports 87 percent of all credit card transactions and 29 billion ATM transactions each year.  Its security features Pervasive Encryption, where 100 percent of data associated with any application, cloud service or database can be encrypted with no impact to system performance.

Of the more than thirteen billion data records lost or stolen since 2013 around the world, only four percent have been encrypted¹, making the vast majority of this information vulnerable to a breach. For CAIXA, the ability to encrypt all of their transactions was a key differentiator while selecting the IBM Z platform.

By using a platform capable of encrypting 100 percent of the data, CAIXA will be able to offer an unprecedented level of data security and compliance to its more than 80 million customers - inside and outside of Brazil. In addition, IBM Z is an essential component to ensure CAIXA is compliant with the rules of the European Data Protection Act, known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).