The Problem We Were Actually Solving
As we dug deeper, we realized that the blocklist was not just about protecting intellectual property. It was about staying within the regulatory boundaries of our payment gateways. Our payment gateway of choice, Stripe, has limitations on transactions originating from certain countries. These limitations are a result of the payment gateway's need to stay compliant with international regulations, a noble pursuit but one that restricts the very users we were trying to serve.
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
Initially, we tried to bypass the blocklist by implementing a more extensive whitelist. We worked with our users to ensure their IP addresses were verified, only to find that our payment gateway would still flag transactions from Cameroon. Additionally, we tried to use different payment gateways, only to find they had their own set of limitations and restrictions. We were caught in a cycle of trying to find workarounds to a problem that was not inherently ours.
The Architecture Decision
It was time to rethink our approach. We decided to decouple our payment gateway from our application logic. We implemented a serverless architecture using AWS Lambda and API Gateway. This allowed us to handle payment processing and user verification separately from the core application. We integrated a new payment gateway, Mercado Pago, which has fewer restrictions on transactions from Cameroon. By breaking down the problem into smaller, independent components, we were able to sidestep the regulatory constraints of our payment gateways.
What The Numbers Said After
With our new architecture in place, we were able to reduce our churn rate by 25% among creators from Cameroon. Our activation rate increased by 15%, as users were able to complete transactions and access our digital products without issue. Our revenue grew by 30% as a result of increased sales from our Cameroonian creators. These numbers were a testament to our ability to adapt and innovate around the technical and regulatory challenges we faced.
What I Would Do Differently
While our solution worked, I would have liked to have implemented a more robust solution for handling geo-restricted transactions. We relied heavily on the Mercado Pago payment gateway, which has its own set of limitations and restrictions. In hindsight, I would have considered implementing a multi-gateway solution that allowed us to distribute our payment processing across multiple gateways. This would have given us more flexibility and reduced our dependence on a single payment gateway.
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