Mobile Banking: A Branch in Your Pocket

Maxim Korobov grew up in Moscow, graduated from MEPhI, and helped acquaintances as a system administrator before employment. Systems on Oracle and Delphi followed. His first mobile service, a Xamarin app for medical appointments, showed how motivating it is to build a product people can see and use.

At a mobile startup Maxim became a team lead, owning the shared result instead of only his code. Tight economics justified cross-platform development, but eighteen months of pivots without a release pushed him to leave. In 2014 he chose Tinkoff for its mobile scale, strong team, and management track.

Bank growth required changes to applications and organization. In 2020 the mobile group expanded from about twenty to two hundred people and split across business verticals. Core platforms and discipline leads preserved culture, hiring, and competency standards. Native development remained central because the phone serves as a bank branch.

Removal from the App Store and Google Play turned platform dependence into a risk and created a response team. The organization is building alternative distribution and more technology in house while exploring watches, smart devices, assistants, and agentic interfaces. Maxim sustains the pace through hybrid work and an annual personal strategy.