Developing a universal fintech product core to enter the European market

Fintech company Revoplus is an installment payment service that customers can use when purchasing goods online. It is being actively developed in Russia under the Mokka brand. Revoplus is already cooperating with large retailers and has received investments from Baring Vostok totaling $25 million.

In 2018, Revoplus management decided to develop and launch the service in Europe as well, starting with Poland. The European market holds more potential for any financial service. Since, in Europe, attitudes towards the credit system are generally softer than in Russia, and payment discipline is more stable.

The Evrone team had already contributed to the development of the Russian version of the solution, so Revoplus contacted us to start scaling an IT product for use in Europe.

The challenge: to create a product core for quick launch in other countries

In order to quickly deploy the service in any country, it was necessary to create a product core that would contain the main business logic, with the ability to quickly connect specific implementations of this logic: SMS informing, payment systems, and so on.

The Evrone team was best suited for that task for two reasons. First, we were already familiar with the product and it’s loan management software. Second, we had all the necessary skills and expertise in terms of writing financial logic, installment solutions, the implementation of banking software and digital banking solutions development in Ruby on Rails.

The first approach: adapting the Russian version of the application

Since Revoplus was already a complete financial product that had managed to attract investments and the attention of customers, the management decided to adapt the current solution and formulate another version for use in other countries as well.

That is how the Revoplus Poland team was born. Their goal was to "cut off the unnecessary" from the monolith of the Russian product. It was necessary to work with a lot of legacy code that was in place due to participation from multiple different teams in the early stages of development.

First, we had to determine the main functions of the product. These functions needed to remain in the core and included: creating requests for payments in installments, receiving solutions, calculating payment schedules, creating APIs for client accounts, integrating payments, generating documents, and sending messages. These functions would all remain the same, regardless of which country the product was used in.

Moreover, we got rid of the partially implemented or marked "for deletion" functions. More than 300,000 lines of irrelevant code were removed, and we added the ability for third-party contractors to create personal accounts. We also worked on the payments and billing solutions development and integrated payment capabilities. However, in the course of development, it became clear that the Polish and Russian products were becoming very different. So, the founders decided to develop them separately: the Russian one in one way and the European in another.

The second approach: to refine the core of the product

The main idea was to create a universal product with a flexible code architecture for quick integration in EU countries. So we created a product core that contains the main functions: the financial logic, calculation of the available limits, identification and authentication, etc. Then we added on solutions tailored to the needs of the Polish market. Regional plugins, for example, a payment gateway or SMS informing, can be easily connected to the core. Any online store can access the service, and it is simple to set up an online payment connection for internet businesses. There is a lot of API use cases in the banking industry, and you can work with Revoplus through the API and offer your customers the option to pay in installments.

Tech stack

The Revoplus Poland project is implemented in pure Ruby and Ruby on Rails. We used Kubernetes for container orchestration. Evrone is also developing an API for the Revo Android app. The client account system was developed in .NET by a third-party contractor and integrated by our team.

The result

The company's entry into the international market was successful, and Revoplus is already operating in Poland. An additional team is already preparing for a launch in Romania. They plan to use the core that we helped build for the current Polish solution to expand and launch in more countries across Europe.

The Evrone team continues to work on the product. Now, we are engaged in technical support and scaling of a web service, as well as the development and implementation of new functions. For example, we recently finished the task of collecting analytics from users, and we are preparing the integration of payment systems and SMS providers for further connection to the core. The fintech product will continue to expand in Poland by connecting new stores and websites, which we are developing the plugins for, as they strive to become one of the most preferred online payment methods in Poland.

The main focus of international product development is to create a one-stop solution to reduce support and implementation costs. If you also plan to develop your project with API first architecture for launch in other countries and are looking for a team that can help with installments solutions development, fill out the form below. We will contact you to discuss how our experience can help your project achieve the desired results faster.