By Gary Bowers, Product Manager at Ecentric
Ecentric has made significant enhancements to its In Person Payments platform in order to improve performance and reliability, and meet customer requirements around reporting and analytics, as well as drive growth within the company as it extends its offering to Tier 2 retailers in the local market and across all acquiring banks in South Africa.
We had found that being able to provide a variety of ways to integrate demands significant enhancements to its Platform. Prior to the acquisition of Thumbzup, it was challenging for us to focus on stability, scalability and efficiency. However, Ecentric’s aim is always to provide a reliable service to its merchants, thus the team set out to deliver exactly that post acquisition. The technologies that the teams have implemented allow for a flexible and sturdy platform which supports a modular approach to certain merchant requirements.
In 2023, Ecentric acquired the IP, people, and customers of innovative technology payment solutions company Thumbzup, to make a significant play into the broader retail sector, and reach more national retailers in the tier two retail sector, while being a trusted partner to service providers supporting SMMEs.
Platform enhancements to drive growth
Technical and functional improvements carried out on the platform have resulted in improved performance and processing speed, allowed for integration with external systems, introduced new features, and more robust reporting and analytics for retail customers. These enhancements, which have transformed the platform and contributed to Ecentric’s growth, include:
- Upgraded Caching Service from Memcached to Redis: Transitioning to Azure-managed Redis with zone-redundant high availability has greatly improved data retrieval speeds and overall system performance, leading to faster and more reliable transactions.
- Database Re-architecture and Optimization: A comprehensive re-architecture and optimisation of the database has resulted in a significant increase in transaction processing speed and reliability.
- Implemented Kafka Data Streaming: Integrating Kafka has enabled real-time data streaming to Data Warehouse and Data Lake solutions. This enhancement facilitates more robust data analytics and reporting capabilities, empowering better decision-making.
- Introduced Webhook Functionality: Adding webhook functionality to allow real-time notifications and seamless integration with external systems.
- Card-Not-Present Refunds and Card-Present Tokenization: These new features provide enhanced payment security and flexibility, addressing key customer needs and expanding the platform’s capabilities.
Upgraded technology stack for improved security, reliability
Ecentric has also implemented several measures that will improve the platform’s overall reliability and security, which will contribute to growth and further strengthen its market leadership position. These enhancements include:
- Migration to Azure Hub and Spoke Architecture: Migrating to an Azure Hub and Spoke architecture has provided a robust, scalable, and cost-effective solution for managing our cloud environment. By centralising security, governance, and shared services in the Hub, we’ve enhanced control, improved security, and simplified the management of our Azure resources, all while maintaining flexibility and scalability.
- Continuous Performance Monitoring with JMeter: Integrating JMeter into our Jenkins build pipelines to continuously monitor performance during development cycles. This ensures that the platform can seamlessly handle high transaction volumes, maintaining reliability under load.
- Technology Stack Upgrade: Upgrading our technology stack to the latest stable versions of JDK, WildFly, and Angular, ensuring optimal performance, enhanced security, and compatibility with modern applications.
- Migration to Futurex HSMs with TR31 Keyblocks: Migrating from Thales 9000 to Futurex HSMs, and implementing TR31 Keyblocks to enhance cryptographic security and protect sensitive data.
- Comprehensive Monitoring and Alerts: Integrating advanced monitoring and alerting dashboards, providing real-time visibility into system performance and transaction metrics. Users can set up alerts across multiple metrics, including HSM, Switch, and API calls, to proactively address any potential issues.
- Enhanced Security with Azure Entra SSO: Adding support for Azure Entra Single Sign-On (SSO), significantly improving identity and access management with enhanced security features.
Payments, specifically integrated payments, have matured extensively the last few years, and Payments Service Providers have eagerly sought to provide their merchants an easy means to enable Card Present processing. Feedback from merchants has mostly been that the overhead from scheme mandates are typically extensive, and one of the company’s goals is to obfuscate those complications as much as possible. Ecentric is committed to continuously innovating the In-Person Payments platform, and using customer insights to maintain our leadership in the industry and meet evolving customer needs.
Moving forward, we plan to build on the foundation of our recent improvements by leveraging the scalability and flexibility of our Cloud architecture. This will enable us to introduce new features and services more rapidly while maintaining the highest standards of security and performance.
