How we moved XXImo to the cloud: An interview with Christiaan Rakowski ahead of the AWS Summit Amsterdam 2025
- 02 April 2025
Today, we all expect speedy, seamless ways to pay for our travel on a daily basis. Payments need to be smart, connected, and frictionless to match the needs of modern businesses and employees, with rising trends, including multimodal travel, shared mobility, the use of electric vehicles, and working from home.
The boom in on-demand travel options and the scattered associated costs require a new approach, both for mobility service providers and the people and the companies they serve.
Here at XXImo, we’re in the business of creating future-proof mobility payment solutions. Solutions that range from streamlining the invoicing process for customers with many multimodal commuters to simplifying mobility access management through real-time controls for customers who need on-demand flexibility. And that’s where XXImo’s innovative cloud-based payment processing makes all the difference.
We’re proud to lead the charge with our cloud-based approach to payment processing. But what does building the infrastructure that powers this seamless, future-proof mobility experience take?
To find out, we sat down with Christiaan Rakowski, XXImo's Solution Architect, ahead of his talk at AWS Summit Amsterdam 2025 on Wednesday, April 16th, 2025. At AWS Summit Amsterdam, Chris will share how XXImo became one of the first EU Visa card issuers in the world to process payments entirely through the AWS Cloud. Register here.
Scaling payments and simplifying the mobility experience in a cloud-first world? Here’s what we learned from our pre-event interview with Christiaan. 🚀
We'll go over this whole migration journey in more detail, both operationally and technically. The talk will last 45 minutes and includes room for questions at the end. So, if you want to find out more about how we got where we are, join our talk.
XXImo’s cloud-first innovation in mobility payments
Before we dive into the interview, here’s a little more about XXImo and our partnership with AWS. First established in 2011, over the years XXImo has built a strong reputation as a pioneering provider of mobility payment solutions. Initially offering fuel and parking cards, we’ve since evolved into a full-service mobility payment platform, enabling businesses to offer seamless, multimodal travel solutions for their customers.
In 2023, XXImo acquired its Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence and became a Visa Principal Member. Less than a year later, we set out on a journey of transitioning all our payment processing to the cloud, with the help of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Visa Cloud Connect, and Amazon Payment Cryptography (APC).
Meet Christiaan Rakowski, our expert in cloud-driven fintech innovation
XXImo’s transition to a cloud-first approach marks a significant milestone in the company’s journey, positioning ourselves as a leader in mobility payments. By fully migrating to the cloud, we provide organisations with flexible, scalable, affordable, and secure solutions that meet the demands of modern movement. That’s all while setting a new industry standard as one of the first companies globally to process 100% of our card payments in the cloud.
As a core member of XXImo since 2018, Christiaan has been a significant driving force behind our technological transformation, and his impressive leadership has been a key element of our cloud-first strategy. Let’s hear more about his experience of XXImo’s migration to the cloud.
XXImo is a mobility payments platform and product at its core. We facilitate business travellers with a single payment product for all their business needs.
So, people typically have different cards for various purposes. For example, maybe they have a separate card for fuel and one for public transport. Depending on your country, you might even have multiple cards for different uses. However, for example, if you have a separate bus or Metro card, at XXImo, we can streamline them into one card.
Depending on your sales channel, we have a partner who can brand that card, too, as a fully white-labelled solution. We also offer a single administrative entry point for our customers. So, that means we provide one invoice and one portal, so everything is nicely consolidated.
Much of our decision boiled down to our desire to grow as the European market leader in mobility payments. As part of that, we foresaw a lot of growth in our customer base. And with that growth, we needed to be prepared on our infrastructure and technology side to handle all that inflow.
The power of the cloud with AWS is its Elastic Compute capability. They really do offer the pay-as-you-use model, and you get all the computing power provisioned right when you need it.
So, there's no need to pre-plan that power. It's right there, ready to go.
Going into the transformation, as a Microsoft technology company, we were looking forward initially to moving to the Azure cloud. However, we ended up choosing AWS for their product offering. It fit us much better.
Our learning really had to happen on the job, which was both fun and challenging. We did a lot of theoretical work with our account experts and migration partner, Cloud Nation, who had more experience in these kinds of projects. For example, they had real-world experience using the cloud products by AWS, knew the ins-and-outs of their offerings, and knew what could and could not work.
We teamed up with them to fill that skill gap on our side. Of course, as you work along the way, you have those hidden “gotcha” moments, that you really didn't expect to happen. We took these surprises as they came.
Despite all our preparations, we found that in some cases, we still had to change course at the last minute. Thanks to the flexibility and team commitment, we could make it all work.
In total, we spent one and a half to two years on the migration. A lot of this time was spent on the preparation phase, which involved more theory and putting the plan on paper.
In total, we spent one and a half to two years on the migration. A lot of this time was spent on the preparation phase, which involved more theory and putting the plan on paper.
When it came to our migration efforts, we implemented them carefully and in a very scoped way. We worked on small tasks and projects at a time. As we are a 24/7 business, we wanted to de-risk the migration as much as possible.
We chose a slightly longer lead time than we could have, mainly to avoid any risks during the process.
XXImo was originally a more classic enterprise organisation. We had two separate locations and hosted everything in our own data centres with our previous hosting partners.
Of course, this had certain downsides. We used many Windows machines in a very classic setup, and that was a hindering factor when we wanted to expand.
At the time, if we wanted to prototype, we needed to go through a lengthy process, work with a partner to set up those machines, and get everything provisioned. There was just a lot of overhead in the past.
Now, we have the power of the cloud. AWS does "elasticity" really well. That’s their branding term, but they really live up to it.
If you want something, you can just click a button, and it will be there within a few minutes. That speeds up innovation a lot.
As part of our European growth plan, I really wanted to create a more robust infrastructure that is even more geographically redundant than it previously was.
You can easily achieve geographic redundancy with AWS. With just a click of a button, AWS can scale you across multiple European regions.
That is much cheaper than going into a data centre and providing your own location there. It’s also much simpler, not just in terms of the actual cost for the location, rent, and equipment, but also operationally.
On the HR side of the business, instead of an “everything” or “nothing”, approach, we can more specifically create employee records and enable certain arrangement features or mobility services for a future date, which offers more flexibility and configuration.
We've been working on our feature set for quite some time. Time scheduled processing has been made a lot easier and more efficient in this new environment.
Now, we can handle requests for future events much more simply than we could in our previous environment. In our new infrastructure, it's much easier to delay certain events and messages to process specific sub-elements of a request later.
On the HR side of the business, instead of an “everything” or “nothing”, approach, we can more specifically create employee records and enable certain arrangement features or mobility services for a future date, which offers more flexibility and configuration.
First, go for it at your own pace. There’s no one-size-fits-all in the process. “Lift and shift” is never as it is, and there’s always going to be learning along the way.
Be prepared, but also accept that you'll never be fully ready. Go on your journey and adventure, and do it at your own pace.
For tech companies considering a complete migration to the cloud-first world, it's much easier to adhere to the privacy regulations that are required of you, and also desired by certain customers. You have much more flexibility and options to easily create dedicated, isolated environments to guarantee those privacy and security requirements.
At the same time, you can more easily scope specific custom development for customers to their environment, reducing your operational risk of affecting other parts of your landscape or enhancing your capabilities of integrating with a customer even further. That’s because you have that isolated environment where you can work with them.
In the cloud-first model, everything is API-first, so you don't necessarily need to use our UIs. You can bring your own app or portals. Even if you’re without that kind of tool, you can be completely UI-less, in a way.
We'll go over this whole migration journey in more detail, both operationally and technically. The talk will last 45 minutes and includes room for questions at the end. So, if you want to find out more about how we got where we are, join our talk.
What to expect from Christiaan Rakowski’s talk at AWS Summit Amsterdam 2025
If you’re interested in diving deeper into XXImo’s migration to the cloud, here’s a bit more about Christiaan Rakowski’s talk at the AWS Summit Amsterdam 2025 on Wednesday, April 16th 2025.
During the session, Christiaan will predominantly share how AWS has empowered and helped XXImo to move our payment infrastructure to the cloud and the benefits this move has provided.
Here are a range of topics you can expect to hear at the talk:
- The cloud-first strategy behind XXImo’s transition to AWS
- How the Visa Cloud Connect and Amazon Payment Cryptography tools helped transform XXImo’s transaction processing and encryption
- The importance of scalability and cost optimisation in modern mobility payments
- The impact of cloud infrastructure on business growth and customer satisfaction
Who is Chris’s session suitable for?
Chris’s session is suitable for anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the potential of cloud technology within the mobility industry. Attendees will learn how it can be used to improve payment systems, security, and operational efficiency within their company.
But here’s who the session will be particularly suitable for:
- Tech professionals, including cloud architects, developers, fintech engineers
- Mobility leaders
- Finance professionals
- Innovation officers
- AWS ecosystem partners
- Travel solution providers
- Fleet managers
For those in the tech and mobility industries, the AWS Summit Amsterdam brings the opportunity to learn about the latest advancements and innovations in cloud technology.
As well as attending Chris’s session, guests can also hear from other industry leaders, who’ll share real-world examples and insights on how cloud technology can improve payment systems and create new business opportunities. There’s also the opportunity to network with AWS experts, fintech engineers, and other technology professionals across the mobility and payments industries.
“By migrating to AWS, we are accelerating our ability to scale, innovate, and enhance our service delivery. With Visa Cloud Connect and APC, combined with our strategic partnerships with Visa, Amazon, and CloudNation, we now process transactions with even greater efficiency and security. This transition enables us to offer improved SLAs, ensuring higher reliability and customer satisfaction. Additionally, we now have access to a wealth of on-demand services and expertise, allowing us to optimise operations and continuously enhance our platform’s capabilities,”
– Zaheer Sacranie, CTO at XXImo
Key milestones in XXImo's cloud migration
Before finishing up, we’d like to summarise and highlight some key milestones during XXImo’s move to the cloud. The migration was a technical challenge but represents a major strategic leap for XXImo.
Here are some of the key milestones in our cloud migration journey:
- Full migration to AWS: We successfully migrated all payment processing systems, including transaction and encryption management, to AWS. This removed the need for on-premises infrastructure and means we can scale our solutions across Europe more efficiently. With AWS, we have new scalability and flexibility to meet customer’s growing demands for mobility payments. With AWS’s global reach and local data centres, we guarantee super-fast, reliable, and secure payment processing for people all over Europe.
- Visa Cloud Connect integration: We’re one of the first adopters of Visa Cloud Connect. This solution enables secure and direct integration with Visa, one of the world’s leaders in digital payments. Thanks to this partnership, we can process payments with more customers than ever and with greater speed and reliability.
- Amazon Payment Cryptography (APC) implementation: With the onboarding of APC, we’ve moved from traditional hardware-based encryption to a cloud-native, pay-per-use model. This method optimises cost efficiency and means we can maintain high levels of security compliance.
- Improved security and compliance: Likewise, our cloud infrastructure means we meet the highest data security and compliance standards, including PCI DSS and other regulatory requirements. This is absolutely essential in the payments industry, where data breaches and fraud are enormous concerns.
Our migration was a combined, collaborative effort with AWS, Visa, and CloudNation. Each partner played a crucial role in contributing to the transition.
Discover how cloud-first mobility payments are shaping the future
The AWS Summit Amsterdam 2025 gives you the opportunity to engage with XXImo, Christiaan Rakowski, and AWS experts to learn exactly how cloud-based mobility payments are transforming the future of business travel and multimodal transport solutions.
Join us to learn how cloud-first mobility payments can help your organisation scale, optimise costs and operational efficiencies, and improve security standards. Don’t miss the chance to hear Christiaan Rakowski unpack our transformational journey to the cloud.
Learn how to scale mobility payments securely and efficiently – the XXImo way. Let’s talk at AWS Summit. Register here.