“Mobile banking apps are the most critical platform for every bank. They are the flagship products that banks prioritize first. That’s why I feel proud every time we get the chance to work on a highly challenging mobile banking project for our clients,” said Rattapol (Pom), Deputy Head of Business Solution from the Tech Solution Delivery team at Bluebik Vulcan.
Rattapol directly oversees both the Business Analyst (BA) and System Analyst (SA) teams, and he has led multiple mobile banking projects for several leading banks in Thailand. These are undoubtedly major projects that many IT professionals would want to tackle at least once in their career, because it means you’re creating something used by millions of people, and what you build becomes an essential part of millions of lives.
We invited Rattapol to share his experiences and the challenges of managing mobile banking projects, along with how he leads teams to build a real legacy in the financial industry. Let’s dive into all of these perspectives in this article.
Mobile Banking: A Significant Opportunity for IT Professionals
Rattapol shared how he started working on one particularly tough mobile banking project. At the time, he and his team had never handled this kind of work before. But everyone committed to learning more and sharpening their coding skills until they successfully delivered the project. It became a portfolio piece that everyone remains proud of to this day.
“Back then, we were assigned to build a mobile banking app for a bank with a very tight timeline. Our team wasn’t particularly fluent in mobile banking development yet, but we pushed ourselves to learn what we needed and delivered successfully. Ten years later, when more mobile banking projects came in, we were much more ready because it was still the same team, and everyone kept learning and developing themselves.”
“Actually, not many IT professionals get the chance to work on mobile banking in their lifetime. So, when the opportunity came, we wanted to take it at least once,” he said, describing why he accepted that first project ten years ago.
“Everything in mobile banking comes with clearly defined timelines. When the Bank of Thailand announces new regulations, every bank needs to respond as quickly as possible. That’s what makes it exciting, the collaboration between our team and the bank’s team, with over a hundred people involved. Everyone gives it their absolute all.”
And when those opportunities come, the most important thing to build is trust with clients, so you earn the chance to work together again.
“What I always tell the team is that our core values are professionalism and ownership. Being professional means, we work proactively and keep learning all the time. Ownership means whatever we do; we treat it as our own work. That mindset improves how we approach the job because it makes us think ahead for clients and look for ways to extend innovation.”
“If we get to build a mobile banking app and then see people using what we created, we feel incredibly fulfilled, because it feels like this is our work. That’s ownership. And once you feel it, it stays with you. When the next project comes, you give it everything again, because you feel like you own the work.”
Before each project begins, Rattapol also makes sure the team understands the bigger picture.
“I always show the team the impact of the work before we start, so everyone is aligned on the same goal. Our work is like an orchestra. Everyone may play different instruments or improvise along the way, but we perform under one shared theme and one shared goal.”
The Many Challenges Behind Mobile Banking
With millions of users and a highly complex financial ecosystem behind every screen, mobile banking naturally comes with significant challenges.
“The first challenge in mobile banking is the ‘system.’ It needs to be easy to use because there are millions of users. Next is ‘security.’ The app must provide the highest level of security while still being easy to use. The third is ‘performance,’ meaning when you tap something, it needs to respond immediately. When we can deliver on these three, it means we’ve earned the client’s trust.”
“And another challenge is ‘time.’ We need to deliver within tight timeframes. Once the app is released to the public, every feature has to work properly. Many times, there are critical constraints, such as the programming language the client used previously.
There was one time when the vendor no longer supported that language, which meant there would be no security patches to address potential security issues in the future. So, we had to rewrite the code using a different language that the vendor still supported, in order to launch the new app in time to meet the Bank of Thailand’s deadline. If we didn’t make it in time, we wouldn’t comply with the Bank of Thailand’s policy and would have to take the app down, making it unavailable for service. This would definitely impact a large number of people.”
Super App: The Trend of the Era That’s Sometimes Like an ‘Iceberg’
Rattapol shared how the market is shifting from multiple separate apps toward Super Apps, where various services coexist in one place.
In the past, you might have seen one organization with multiple apps offering different services. But Rattapol explained that the current trend is combining everything so users can access a range of services in a single app. That’s the mission of mobile banking today, and the Bluebik Vulcan team has experienced building Super Apps as well.
“There was one project where we had to build a Super App by combining two apps into one. One was for mutual funds, and the other was for provident funds. Previously, if users wanted to understand their investment allocation, they had to download two apps, log in to each one, and add things up themselves using a calculator. It was complicated. We redesigned the experience so they could access everything in one app, with the investment portfolio consolidated. It solved a real pain point for users who have multiple financial products.”
The challenge was integrating the two login security systems and making them as seamless as possible.
“First, we had to figure out how to combine the security systems for logging in from two places into one and make it as seamless as possible. We had to create that innovation, because we were merging the frontend experience while the backend still relied on the original components. So, it was kind of like spaghetti, but we got through it.”
And before anything can be built, the team also needs to carefully study the legacy system that was originally built by another team.
“To consolidate the Super App, we had to study the existing business logic of each app first. Sometimes the software house that built it before didn’t leave documentation, so we had to open the source code and figure it out ourselves. And the fun part is that sometimes the source code we received didn’t match what was running in production. We had to help them investigate everything all over again.”
Rattapol explained that what users see is often just the tip of the iceberg.
“Besides updating the app based on the client’s new UX/UI, we also had to understand the existing business logic. What the client sees might only be the tip of the iceberg. Underneath, there’s a lot more work. For example, one client’s mobile banking app had been used for nearly ten years and went through multiple versions, from the first users to today. They may not have had specs in the past, so our System Analysts had to read the code and analyze what needed to happen next based on how it was originally built. Then they turned it into a flow for the developers to implement. And when we delivered the work, we also completed full documentation so the client could understand what the entire iceberg actually consisted of.”
And of course, the Bluebik Vulcan team works using Agile, which allows them to review point by point, step by step. When feedback and suggestions come in, they make immediate adjustments before moving forward. The key principle is to make the work as sustainable and easy to build on as possible.
“The work we do for clients is to solve problems and make the app expandable. Based on the framework we build, if new modules are added later, they should be easy to add without disrupting the original structure. Adding small features should never mean rebuilding the entire app. We design for scalability. We design for the future. And yes, it’s harder than doing it cheaply and finishing fast, but what we do is painful, but complete.”
Deployment Day: A Moment of Unity
Mobile banking is an app that’s used almost around the clock, which means the team needs to stay prepared at all times to deliver a smooth rollout. That’s why deployment day feels like a moment of unity for everyone on the project.
“One thing I’m proud of is our team’s closeness. Even though deployment could be handled by just the developers, our entire team stays together. We prepare a deployment plan with the client: shutting down the system at a certain hour, backing up data, installing components, and running scripts. We might bring the system back up around midnight, and that’s when the client starts testing. If it passes, we move to the next step. If not, we roll back and fix it.”
Rattapol also shared the fun and challenges of unexpected errors. Like one time when deployment finished at 3 AM and he was driving home. As he was getting close to home, someone from the data center called to report an urgent case caused by an internal system issue. He had to drive back to fix it fully. In one sense, this is truly hard work. But for Rattapol, flexible working methods and time matter. He and the team can manage their own schedules. So, driving back to resolve it properly was simply what he knew he had to do.
He emphasized why flexibility is essential.
“Rigid working hours don’t win people’s hearts. In our line of work, night deployments will always happen. When you’re building banking apps used 24/7, you have to deploy at night, so users have a seamless morning.”
In the case he mentioned, he had to fix the issue before 8 AM because it affected the corporate payroll system.
“If I didn’t pick up the phone or make it back in time, many people wouldn’t have gotten paid that morning. I was lucky I was still driving when they called.”
Moments like this remind him that mobile banking is more than coding. It’s real impact on real lives, full of pressure but also full of unmatched opportunities to grow.
BA/SA: The Next Generation
From his experience working on mobile banking and many other fun and challenging projects, Rattapol wants to pass opportunities to the next generation.
“We are always looking for successors. When we see someone with potential, we coach them fully. We observe not to criticize but to see whether they’re ready for the next step. Promotion is a meaningful opportunity.”
Coaching for Rattapol, goes beyond work.
“Also, the coaching I’m talking about involves conversations, not just about work. Sometimes we talk about mental health too, whether they’re okay and whether they can handle it. We need to look after them. I believe that if we can care for them like they’re part of the family, they can give their all to their work because they have nothing to worry about. When they perform well, we’re ready to support their promotion. When the team has warmth and trust, ready to fight together, all of this makes them want to give their all in the years ahead.”
As shared in his previous article ‘Unlocking the Formula for Building a Legacy in Business as a BA/SA – The Bluebik Vulcan Way’, Rattapol believes in passing down not only skills but also ways of thinking. This includes work standards, data and documentation practices, client care, and leadership mindsets. When leaders create opportunities and support their teams’ mental wellbeing, the next generation can grow into strong leaders who create meaningful impact in banking and across many other industries waiting ahead.
If you’re looking for work that creates real impact and builds a lasting legacy just like Pom, we invite you to join the Bluebik team. Explore open positions at: https://bluebik.com/th/job/
