TiDB Practices and Solutions for Core Banking and Financial Industry

TiDB, a high‑performance open‑source distributed database, has been widely adopted in banks, securities, insurance, online payment, and fintech sectors, supporting over twenty critical financial business scenarios.

Key Financial Business Scenarios

Complex banking systems covering accounts, settlements, loans, cards, and internet‑based services.

Requirements for distributed core systems: security, stability, reliability; distributed computing and data management with elastic scaling; high concurrency, low latency, high throughput; support for mixed OLTP/OLAP workloads; reporting and data submission; strong consistency (RPO=0, RTO<30s); multi‑center active‑active disaster recovery; low migration difficulty; and convenient operations.

Existing Architecture Pain Points

Traditional centralized databases rely on proprietary hardware, lack horizontal elasticity, mismatch modern service‑oriented architectures, incur high construction and maintenance costs, lock into DB2/Oracle, and cannot leverage cloud advancements.

MySQL‑based distributed solutions suffer from middleware maturity issues, high application intrusion, rigid data models, limited batch processing, weak distributed transaction support, consistency risks, lack of elastic scaling, HA concerns, and complex multi‑center active‑active setups.

TiDB HTAP‑Based Core Banking Solutions

Solution 1: TiDB as Primary Core Transaction Database

TiDB serves as the main database, offering transparent access similar to a single‑node system while providing built‑in multi‑center active‑active disaster recovery, distributed transaction support, automatic node scaling, and load balancing without application changes.

Reduces migration difficulty and risk.

Preserves existing business and data models.

Lowers maintenance complexity and cost.

Enables horizontal throughput scaling.

Supports standard SQL, distributed transactions, complex joins, mixed OLTP/OLAP workloads.

Provides strong consistency (RPO=0, RTO<30s) and multi‑center disaster recovery.

Solution 2: Core Transaction MySQL + TiDB as Post‑Processing Store

MySQL with middleware handles online transactions; TiDB receives near‑real‑time CDC sync for batch, analytical, and reporting workloads, overcoming MySQL sharding limitations.

Solution 3: Unit‑Based MySQL + TiDB Post‑Store

Core services are micro‑service‑ified; each unit uses MySQL for online work, while TiDB aggregates data across units for global analytics, batch processing, and reporting.

Real‑World Deployments

Core banking pilots with Changliang Technology, covering accounts, loans, cash management, etc.

Payment systems for Beijing Bank, UnionPay, Tianyi Pay, PayPay, etc.

Wealth‑management core for China Everbright Bank and others.

Real‑time risk control platforms for banks, WeBank, Tianyi Pay, Shopee, Xiaohongshu, Pinduoduo.

Insurance front‑, middle‑, and back‑office applications for Ping An Insurance.

Migration Strategies to TiDB

Dual‑write routing for gradual cut‑over.

Primary‑secondary replication using tools like GoldenGate.

TiDB as primary with legacy DB as fallback via DSG integration.

Gray‑scale migration by module.

Backup & Restore

Implemented BR (Backup & Restore) for distributed physical backups, achieving faster backup with more nodes, and a two‑center strong‑consistency solution for RPO=0 scenarios.

Upcoming TiDB 5.0

Planned enhancements include higher throughput, lower latency, improved storage stability, tighter HTAP integration with streaming, geo‑partitioning, and deeper cloud‑native support for private, hybrid, and public clouds.

The article concludes with a call to join the TiDB 5.0 online launch event and community groups.