The Problem We Were Actually Solving
As a systems engineer, I have been working with a team to develop a digital marketplace for creators in Kenya and Ethiopia to sell their products. However, we soon realized that traditional platforms such as PayPal and Stripe were not viable options for our users due to the restrictive payment regulations in these countries. Many of our users were unable to receive payments for their digital products, which rendered our platform useless. I had to find a way to bypass these restrictions and provide a seamless payment experience for our users.
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
Initially, we tried to integrate existing payment gateways that catered to African countries, such as M-Pesa and Paystack. However, we soon discovered that these gateways had limitations and restrictions that made them unsuitable for our platform. For instance, M-Pesa had a limited coverage area, and Paystack had stringent requirements for merchant verification. Moreover, the transaction fees were exorbitant, which would have eaten into our users' profits. After weeks of trying to make it work, we decided to abandon this approach and explore alternative solutions.
The Architecture Decision
We decided to build a custom payment solution that would allow our users to receive payments directly into their bank accounts or mobile wallets. This involved integrating with local banks and mobile network operators to enable seamless transactions. We chose to use a microservices architecture, with each service responsible for a specific function, such as payment processing, user authentication, and transaction logging. We also decided to use a message queue to handle the high volume of transactions and ensure that our system was scalable and fault-tolerant.
What The Numbers Said After
After implementing our custom payment solution, we saw a significant increase in user engagement and transaction volumes. Our system was able to handle over 10,000 transactions per day, with an average latency of 200ms. The error rate was less than 1%, and the transaction success rate was over 95%. We also saw a significant reduction in transaction fees, which averaged around 2% per transaction. Using a profiler, we were able to identify bottlenecks in our system and optimize them for better performance. For example, we discovered that our database queries were taking up a significant amount of time, so we optimized our queries and indexed our tables to improve performance. We also used a tool called Datadog to monitor our system's performance and identify areas for improvement.
What I Would Do Differently
In retrospect, I would have started by building a custom payment solution from the outset, rather than trying to integrate with existing payment gateways. This would have saved us a significant amount of time and resources. I would also have placed more emphasis on testing and quality assurance, as we encountered several issues with our system after launch. Additionally, I would have explored more options for reducing transaction fees, such as negotiating with banks and mobile network operators or using alternative payment methods like cryptocurrencies. Nevertheless, our custom payment solution has been a game-changer for our platform, and we are now able to provide a seamless payment experience for our users in Kenya and Ethiopia.
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