How Finhike Uses Google Cloud and Gemini to Deliver 99.95% Availability in Volatile Markets
Finhike, a digital finance company operating across five countries with over 100,000 clients, built its consumer lending platform on Google Cloud to deliver fast, highly available financial services to customers in underserved markets, including Ukraine. By deploying Gemini for engineering workflows and BigQuery for marketing analytics, Finhike achieved 99.95% availability, a 95 PageSpeed score, and a 20% increase in engineering task completion speed.
Impact
99.95%
Platform availability
95
Google PageSpeed score
1 week
Time to deploy services in new markets
20%
Increase in engineering task speed with Gemini
10% per year
Reduction in storage and compute costs
Challenge
Finhike needed to maintain 99.95% availability for digital lending clients across five countries including Ukraine, while eliminating security false positives that were blocking legitimate users, reducing manual engineering overhead, and enabling rapid entry into new regulated markets without proportional infrastructure cost increases.
Solution
Google Cloud was deployed as Finhike’s core infrastructure layer, with Compute Engine powering its real-time risk engine, Cloud Armor and reCAPTCHA Enterprise replacing a third-party security provider, Gemini accelerating engineering workflows by 20%, and BigQuery automating marketing analytics that had previously required months of manual work.
Tools & Technologies
What Leaders Say
“We operate in rapidly changing markets, so we need the agility to adapt at speed. With Google Cloud we have flexible, scalable infrastructure to quickly adjust our systems to maintain fast, reliable services for our clients.”
“With Gemini, we can complete engineering tasks 20% faster. It allows us to delegate manual work and focus on building the features that help our clients succeed.”
“With the Google Cloud Console, we have clear visibility of our cloud usage, which allows us to manage our budget effectively. As a result, we’ve reduced our storage and compute costs by 10% year over year.”
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Full Story
Finhike operates a fully digital alternative to traditional banking in markets where legacy financial infrastructure is slow, paper-heavy, or inaccessible. Serving over 100,000 clients across five countries, the Lithuanian-headquartered company provides consumer finance products through an online platform that must function reliably even in challenging connectivity environments — including Ukraine, where maintaining stable service for clients despite local infrastructure disruptions is a direct operational requirement.
The core challenge is a familiar one for fintechs operating in volatile emerging markets: availability must be non-negotiable while the cost and complexity of infrastructure must stay manageable. Finhike’s previous security setup also introduced operational friction, with a third-party provider generating frequent false positives that blocked legitimate clients while attempting to filter malicious traffic — creating a poor user experience on a platform where trust is paramount.
Finhike built its core infrastructure on Google Cloud, using Compute Engine to power its proprietary risk engine, which analyzes diverse data pools for real-time lending decisions. A modular deployment approach lets the team stand up services in new markets in as little as one week — starting with minimal compute, validating the platform, then scaling as the client base grows. Google Cloud partner Wise IT supports ongoing reconfiguration of project environments to align with each country’s legal and financial regulatory structures. For security, Finhike migrated to Cloud Armor and reCAPTCHA Enterprise, eliminating the false-positive problem without compromising the user experience.
Gemini entered Finhike’s engineering workflows as an AI assistant for complex coding and database management. The result was a 20% increase in the speed at which engineering tasks are completed, freeing developers to spend more time on product features rather than manual technical work. On the marketing side, BigQuery replaced a manual reporting process that had introduced delays of up to three months; the marketing team now tracks client acquisition sources and conversion rates automatically, enabling faster audience targeting decisions.
Finhike meets its 99.95% availability SLA and achieves a 95 Google PageSpeed score, both key measures of reliability for a digital lender. Storage and compute costs have fallen 10% year over year through active visibility into usage via the Google Cloud Console. Looking ahead, the company plans to migrate its web platform to mobile apps and is exploring AI-powered KYC automation to further reduce friction at onboarding. The bet on Google Cloud has let Finhike stop worrying about infrastructure and focus on its core mission: making financial products accessible to everyone, everywhere.
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