The Problem We Were Actually Solving
Our open-source project is designed to make it easy for people to sell digital goods, no matter where they are in the world. We had people from over 150 countries using our platform, and it quickly became clear that we had to find a way to support creators who were blocked from using Western payment platforms.
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
Our first attempt was to add support for PayPal's "borderless" payment system, which was supposed to allow creators to accept payments from anywhere in the world without needing to set up a local PayPal account. Sounds great, right? The problem was that it was still a Western payment platform, and it still had the same issues – fees, restrictions, and a lack of local support.
We also tried using a service that integrated with Stripe's API, but it still required a Stripe account, which was a no-go for most of our users.
The Architecture Decision
We realized that our only real option was to build our own payment infrastructure, one that was specifically designed to work with the payment systems available in different countries. We started by researching local payment systems, like Qiwi in Russia and Alipay in China, and integrating them into our platform.
We also had to deal with the issue of fraud – some local payment systems are notorious for being vulnerable to it. We had to implement a robust anti-fraud system that could detect and prevent fake transactions.
The result was a custom-built payment infrastructure that was country-specific, secure, and reliable.
What The Numbers Said After
After we implemented our new payment infrastructure, our average transaction rate went up by 25%, and our revenue from creators outside of the West increased by 400%. It wasn't a small change – we were now able to support creators from all over the world, and we were able to build a more diverse and global community.
What I Would Do Differently
Looking back, I would have done more research on local payment systems earlier. We ended up wasting a lot of time and resources trying to make Western payment platforms work, when we could have been building a custom solution from the start.
I would also have built in more flexibility to our payment infrastructure, so that we could easily add or remove payment methods as needed. As it was, we had to do a major overhaul of our system to support new payment methods, which was a painful process.
But in the end, it was worth it – we were able to build a system that truly supported digital creators from all over the world, without relying on Western payment platforms.
Contributor from Nigeria. Customer in Germany. Maintainer in the Philippines. This payment infrastructure handles all three: https://payhip.com/ref/dev9
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