On 12 October, we gathered at Hotel Zonar in Zagreb to celebrate Vestigo’s 25th anniversary. When I stepped on stage that morning, I did not see an audience. I saw clients who have trusted us for many years, partners who have walked beside us, and colleagues who have poured their talent into everything we have built. That is what this day was really about.
After my opening presentation, two of our major partners honoured us with keynotes of their own: Mrs Liana Keserić, on behalf of our largest client at home, Raiffeisen Bank, and Mr Alessandro Seralvo, on behalf of our largest client abroad, Cornèr Bank.
A name and a method
Our story almost began under a different name. Our first choice, 4BANK, was turned down, so we opened a Latin dictionary and found vestigo — to follow a trail, to investigate. It became our method: first we understand, then we build. Twenty-five years on, we are still consultants first.
The bet that started it all
In 2001, a leading Croatian bank chose us as their consultants and then trusted us to build two of its core systems: a Card Management System and an end-to-end Cash Management System. There was one catch: the bank ran on mainframe and COBOL. We proposed Java. Mainframe we accepted, but Java we had to prove. So, we bought our own mainframe and proved it works at IBM’s benchmark centre in Montpellier, with IBM’s own team flying in from Hursley. The result became IBM’s most-read white paper that year, and for years we served as IBM’s beta testers for Java on the mainframe. On a joint team-building day we also beat IBM’s Hursley team at football, on 3 July 2006 — twelve years before our national team did the same in Russia 🙂
Partnerships that last
Those early years set the pattern. We began working with Raiffeisen Bank in 2003 and with Cornèr Bank in 2015, and both are still our partners today. We have delivered important projects for a national financial institution and for a large foreign telecom. And as early as 2008 we stepped onto the international market, working with an international card processor for Diners Club franchises. Over all the years since, together with our key partners, we have built our flagship solutions — a Card Management System and an end-to-end Payment Hub, together with the enterprise modules that connect to them.
And none of this would exist without our people — many of whom have been with Vestigo for more than twenty years, and who stood on stage or in the audience with us, because this story is just as much theirs.
Gathering and celebrating together
On 12 October, more than 50 guests joined us at Hotel Zonar, among them leaders from Croatia’s largest banks and senior representatives of state institutions. Beyond the opening keynotes, the day brought three lively panels — moderated by our own Ana Brajković Lađarević and Mario Nemet, and by our host Peter Hopwood — bringing together senior voices from leading banks, the regulator, the card schemes and technology partners, on the future of payments and on building success together. Guests caught up over lunch and later came the part every anniversary deserves: a celebratory cake, and an afternoon cocktail party where the conversations carried on long after the last slide. The response, from guests and colleagues alike, was everything we had hoped for.
Looking forward
Our mission was never simply to deliver software — it was to be our clients’ partner in their success, and that has not changed in twenty-five years. We have never been afraid of a challenge. Our principle is always the same — understand the problem first, then build something that lasts. Our solutions do not grow old; they are designed to protect our clients’ investments and to keep evolving with them.
That philosophy now lives in Holistic Pay — our platform that brings accounts, cards, account-to-account payments and clearing together into a single engine for every kind of payment, now empowered by AI-agent capabilities. It is where our twenty-five years of experience meet the next twenty-five: open, modular, cloud-native, and ready for whatever comes after. Because payments are not just what we do; they are in our DNA. And the most interesting chapter, we believe, is the one we are about to write.
Thank you
This anniversary belongs to every client who trusted us, every partner who walked beside us, and every colleague who stayed late before a go-live so that everything would work the next morning. Thank you to our speakers and panellists, to Peter Hopwood for guiding us through the day, to the team at Hotel Zonar, and to everyone at Vestigo who made it happen.
The next twenty-five years start now. Thank you for being here with us at that very start!
Kata Kamenski
