• Hello Amazon

TLDR; we have moved our technical infrastructure to Amazon in Frankfurt EU, where we will be able to provide an even better and more flexible service. All your data are safe (encrypted) and fully protected (the same stringent EU laws apply).

As you might know at bunq we’re pretty proficient technology nerds 🤓. When we got started some years ago, we built and hosted the infrastructure ourselves. We have very stringent requirements for storage, network security and data protection, which at the time brought us to a FreeBSD based system because of the stability, security and flexibility.

At the end of 2017 we have been pestered by bugs in and surrounding that same FreeBSD, where we had to fix issues in the database system or had to develop workarounds to make required packages work.

Combine this extra work with the insane growth bunq is going through and it’s clear we needed to start looking at different solutions that were even more scalable and required less overhead. The unfortunate DDoS attacks confronted us with a recurring situation where the network stack has issues and became unreachable too quickly. This also meant that we had to speed up our plans to move! 🏃

Luckily we’ve already been doing a lot of research and testing over the last couple of months into different systems, suppliers and infrastructures that would meet and exceed all of our rigorous requirements. Thanks to virtualisation, other suppliers have caught up and infrastructure flexibility has become more mature 🙏.

In the end we found Amazon to be the perfect solution for bunq because of the great level of security (everything is encrypted at rest and in transit), scalability (multiple locations in the EU) and reliability (different zones and off-site backups). Amazon allows us to scale for the future while protecting your money and your privacy. bunq is and will always be in control because we keep managing the infrastructure, encryption keys and protection ourselves 🤝. We will also keep redundant systems, backups and keys in-house to allow even greater flexibility and control moving ahead.

For you this means that your data is secure, your privacy is protected and bunq will become even faster, more reliable and better equipped to face off any challenges coming our way 💪.

If you would like to find out how Amazon Global CTO Werner Vogels and our users responded to this awesome move, check out this short clip from our latest update event!

During this extensive migration we faced many hurdles, complicated challenges and we spent days and nights finding the perfect solutions. As soon as the dust settles we want to address more technical and practical details. Is there anything in particular you would like to know? 🤔 Discuss bunq, AWS and all your questions here on together!

    Is it right that Together itself is not yet hosted on this Amazon infrastructure? As we noticed this forum was down for a while e.g. following the most recent bunq Update event 🤔

      Hey @bunq Team,


      First off I wanted to congrat you for making this amazing move happen. And second I wanted to also thank you for still protecting your users privacy by doing so. Keep up the good work.


      Best wishes,

      Timo

        Hey Jonathan,

        Together was indeed one of the last things to be boxed up and moved. Until last Thurday it was running at a third party but after the aweful, aweful downtime, we moved everything under our own management and into AWS. So from last Thurday, together is now fully managed by bunq and hosted on AWS, giving us way more control to ensure something like the 'bunq Update' effect never happens again! 🎉

        Cheers, Jan-Peter

          Congrats guys. 😃 Amazing choice, especially if you run Kubernetes and you’re as excited as me for EKS to come out. Keep up the amazing work.

            That’s not how the cloud works. Amazon only supplies the infrastructure, so to speak, the rest is all in bunq’s hands.

              I don't agree with the statement dat Amazon is against privacy in general. We are not talking about a hoster in China for instance :) Besides, bunq mentioned encryption at rest (an probably they manage their own keys). What risk do you see?

                Hi Peter-Jan,

                First of all, I wanna to congratulate your whole team with this incredible achievement and bold move. I can imagine it took big amounts of blood sweat and tears.

                Secondly I wanna thank you for this open way of communication. That is definitely something that sets bunq apart from other banks! #likeit

                Keep up the good work!

                Greet, John Do

                  Congrats on a great job! Which AWS services do you use?

                    What do you base the whole "anti-privacy" statement even on? Do you honestly think AWS would be this popular among big companies if there were privacy issues?

                      Great move! This can only bring you good. Also very cool reaction from Werner 👍

                        Congrats with the move to AWS! bunq did a great job and deep respect for the team that spent a lot of time in the quick move to AWS. I didn't notice any issues during the move, well done!

                          Are there any legal changes with this move? Depending on the location of the servers, the local governments may have more power (e.g Switzerland vs US is quite a difference).

                            Great job! I'm looking forward to a item like Netflex posted last year December: "What happens when you press play": http://highscalability.com/blog/2017/12/11/netflix-what-happens-when-you-press-play.html


                            maybe bunq can publish a story as well; what happens when you make a money transfer with bunq :)


                            cheers!

                              Holy... I didn’t know if I completely misread or was still asleep, but my question is answered in the top paragraph. My apologies

                                No problem René!

                                Glad we were able to answer your question 😊

                                Enjoy your evening!

                                  Love to read this! Keep up the good work!

                                    19 days later

                                    Update on ‘patent’ Amazon, https://cryptocurrency-truth.com/2018/04/18/amazon-is-no-friend-to-cryptocurrency-users/


                                    Privacy & data security should be guaranteed under bunq ‘ers. Especially in cloud, databases.


                                    What do you think?

                                      Don't you think comparing bunq who encrypt their data to a cryptocurrency which uses a public ledger is a bit odd?