Meet Tonik: The neobank built to serve Southeast Asia’s unbanked population
Meet Tonik: The neobank built to serve Southeast Asia’s unbanked population
The Tonik neobank case study highlights how an API-first, cloud-native architecture powered by Apiwiz and Google Apigee enabled Tonik to rapidly scale financial inclusion in Southeast Asia. Founded in 2018, Tonik launched in the Philippines to serve an unbanked and underbanked population of 60%. By 2021, it reached 230,000 customers and a $500 million valuation, achieving what legacy banks could not through traditional infrastructure. Its strategy centered on Open Banking APIs, microservices on AWS, and over 300 internal APIs plus 170 external APIs for partner integrations. This openness supports rapid feature rollouts, alternate credit scoring, mobile KYC, biometric authentication, and real-time card issuance. However, scaling Open Banking demanded robust API governance—leading Tonik to a
