Instant Payments for European Banks

Executive Summary

This organization processes millions of transactions monthly, acting as the central hub for payment traffic. To modernize, they adopted Kafka for real-time data movement. Conduktor helped them achieve compliance with PCI DSS, MasterCard, and VISA standards while democratizing access to Kafka across teams.

Challenge

Scaling Kafka for mission-critical workloads unveiled significant challenges:

• Compliance in a regulated environment — Operating under strict regulations from MasterCard, VISA, and PCI DSS, the organization needed robust security controls, encrypted data streams, and tightly managed user access. Continuous auditing and governance consumed valuable resources.
• Kafka complexity — Kafka's powerful capabilities came with a steep learning curve. Its complexity restricted access to a select group of specialists, creating bottlenecks that slowed development and hindered cross-team collaboration.
• Rising costs — Expanding Kafka's ecosystem with Zookeeper, Kafka Connect, and Schema Registry. The organization faced mounting costs and struggled to maintain performance and security at scale.

Solution

The organization adopted Conduktor to simplify Kafka operations, improve security, and enhance visibility across their real-time data infrastructure.

Building a secure real-time data framework

The organization built a secure framework by integrating Kafka with hardware security modules (HSMs) and encryption processes. Conduktor added centralized Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Single Sign-On (SSO), and detailed audit logs, enabling compliance with VISA, MasterCard, and PCI DSS standards while reducing the overhead of manual governance.

Democratizing access to Kafka

Conduktor bridged the gap between Kafka's technical complexity and the organization's need for broader collaboration. Administrators now intuitively manage topics, environments, and security settings, while non-technical users access and consume real-time data without mastering command-line tools.

Empowering teams with ownership and visibility

With visibility into Kafka operations, developers are now empowered to inspect topics, validate data accuracy, and monitor data flow. This reduced inter-team dependencies, streamlined debugging, and accelerated development cycles.

Results

Through Conduktor, the organization migrated legacy batch processes to real-time streaming. This transformation enabled them to provide up-to-date balance updates to banking customers and significantly improved operational agility.

• PCI DSS and card network compliance — Full compliance with MasterCard, VISA, and PCI DSS standards
• Batch-to-realtime migration — Legacy processes transformed to real-time streaming
• Accelerated time to market — Reduced inter-team dependencies and streamlined development
• Organization-wide Kafka adoption — Non-technical users can now access real-time data

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Conduktor help with PCI DSS compliance?

Conduktor provides centralized Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Single Sign-On (SSO), and detailed audit logs that enable compliance with PCI DSS, VISA, and MasterCard standards.

What is batch-to-realtime migration?

Batch-to-realtime migration transforms legacy scheduled data processes into continuous streaming, enabling instant balance updates and real-time transaction visibility for banking customers.

How does Conduktor democratize Kafka access?

Conduktor bridges Kafka's technical complexity gap—administrators manage topics and security intuitively, while non-technical users access and consume real-time data without command-line knowledge.