Poynt
Challenge
Software Development For An All-In-One Omnicommerce Payment Solution Tech Stack Front-end Ember.js, React, Vue.js, Node.js, Express.js, MySQL, Elastic Search, Kafka, Cypress Back-end Java 8, Spring, Spring Boot, MySQL, Redis, Elastic Search, Kafka, Couchbase, Hibernate, Querydsl, Junit/Mockito, Postman, Google Guice Overview Poynt is a revolutionary open commerce platform and the inventor of the Smart Terminal. The Poynt Platform, which is comprised of Poynt’s Smart Terminals, Poynt OS (a powerful Android-based operating system), and Poynt Cloud (a set of cloud-enabled software and management tools), provides an application ecosystem that empowers merchants to grow their businesses leveraging true omnicommerce capabilities. Offering a direct to merchant omnicommerce processing solution: Poynt Processing; a merchant cash advance solution: Poynt Capital; and the only open operating system that can power any smart payment terminal worldwide: Poynt Everywhere; Poynt is deployed across five continents. Founded in 2013, Poynt is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and is backed by Elavon, Google Ventures, Matrix Partners, National Australia Bank, NYCA Partners, Oak HC/FT Partners, Stanford-StartX Fund, and Webb Investment Network. In early 2019, we joined Poynt to provide outsourced software development of the brand-new features and maintenance of the core business functions. Our team quickly grew from 4 to 25 experts in 6 months. We became the primary software development partner for Poynt. Business Goal 1: Poynt Processing Poynt Processing was envisioned to be a new direct to merchant, all-in-one omnicommerce payment solution built around Poynt becoming a Payment Facilitator (PayFac). With its combination of payment processing, onboarding and underwriting, instant funding, choice of smart terminal and software bundles, and access to web-based management tools, Poynt Processing was set to become the newest business unit of Poynt. Our team was trusted to develop this project. Business Goal 2: Poynt Core Poynt Core is Poynt’s business line focused on resellers around the world. This is the second business goal we helped with – supporting the core business functions. We dedicated 50% of our team working on this project to support meeting this business goal. Technical Challenge During the year and a half of the partnership with Poynt, our team faced a lot of interesting challenges and software development tasks. As an outstaffed team, our experts were not deciding the architecture solutions in most cases, but we were always included in discussions and took the role of researchers and developers. The biggest technical challenge for our team to date was to transition from MySQL 5.6 to MySQL 5.7. The efficiency of MySQL 5.7 is much higher, and its implementation allows the handling of more traffic and requires less storage space on Amazon servers. Almost all Poynt servers are located on Amazon and were running on MySQL 5.6 for all database related operations, which were proven to be ineffective; thus, the decision to migrate all Poynt projects was made. Those projects mainly involved core business functions that were running for 5-7 years.
Solution
Migration of database functions from MySQL 5.6 to MySQL 5.7. Partitioning transaction tables took about a year and was finished in July 2020. “The primary reason to migrate to MySQL 5.7 was that Version 5.6 had some major issues with partitioned tables. We made the main transaction tables partitioned to be able to archive whole partitions and move them to external storage, reducing the volume of the database. We had created a custom tool that allowed us to copy data from ordinary tables to partitioned tables.” – Volodymyr Soska, Java Developer Along with the MySQL migration, a second stage was added — migration of the tables from standard to partitioned with the goal of improving archiving capabilities and ultimately saving storage space.
Results
In June 2019, we started the process of development for Poynt Processing with a target launch date of September 2019. Our team was able to achieve an October 1 launch, resulting in a new end-to-end omnicommerce payment solution which has grown rapidly and created a new revenue stream for Poynt. “By introducing Poynt Processing, the company now owned the entire merchant experience from end-to-end. Merchants benefit from best-in-class processing rates, instant activation and onboarding, next day funding, no hidden fees and charges, and real time 24/7 support. In addition, merchants get the choice of a smart terminal and software bundle for a low monthly fee, all of which is shipped to them in just 24 hours — a process that takes up to a week with most other merchant service providers. The most challenging part of the Poynt Processing project was the deadline — because the business season started in Autumn, and we couldn’t let Poynt down!” – Ivan Khrustalov, Team Leader From the launch of Poynt Processing, we supported Poynt’s primary software development from scratch. In the first 10 months following the launch, the number of active merchants has exceeded 200. The latest feature launched for Poynt Processing is the option of using a debit card. Merchants can now opt to reduce their processing rate significantly by having funds transferred to a Poynt issued debit card. The new debit card feature is one of the first to be deployed in the market and is a significant competitive advantage for Poynt Processing. The first stages of MySQL migration were successful with all the above-mentioned benefits achieved in July 2020. Currently, we have the ability to move partitions into external storage, which will decrease Poynt’s database size and save MySQL storage space expenses. However, the migration is not finished, so we can’t evaluate the full business impact yet.
Software Product Development Group
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