California fintech startup

Scalable Solutions Power Identity Verification and Financial Transactions

To accelerate the go-to-market of its financial transaction and identity platform, the company, a California based Fintech startup, partnered with Allata to integrate the system components, to resolve system bugs and help improve demos setup and platform rollout. By collaborating with Allata, they can quickly roll out application environments, set up product demos, and deliver services for new customers. The company is now ready to roll out a solution to the entire world that removes the inability to prove identity—the single most significant barrier to economic inclusion. This will help organizations across the globe deploy financial transaction systems and subsidized programs to citizens without smart devices and bank accounts.

Services

Technology & Cloud

Industry

Financial Services

Abstract creative fingerprint illustration , personal biometric data concept. AI Generated

key deliverables

DevOps processes to automatically build and deploy new versions of the application
APIs to integrate platform components
Automated workflow for application environment utilizing proprietary CI/CD tool
Infrastructure-as-code environment and microservices containers
Agile process for documenting system issues and tracking feature readiness
Jurisdictional logic for compliance with country-specific regulations and financial calculations

tools & technologies

Backend: Golang, Python, Java, face and fingerprint recognition services, Black Forest, JWT and HMAC (security)
Front End: Kotlin (mobile Android app) and React (admin console)
Infrastructure: Docker, Terraform, Kong API Gateway, Kong HMAC verification plugin, Kubernetes, Ethereum Blockchain, Truffle, Solidity Smart Contracts, Vault, Consul, IP file system, Helm, SOPS
CI/CD: internal Allata tool for automating deployments, GitLab, GitHub
AWS Services: EC2, Application Load Balancer, ECR, EKS

Allata is the best software development outsourcing company I’ve worked with. The high quality and velocity of their software development and DevOps process are changing our company for the better. Additionally, their creativity and self-initiative are adding value in ways not seen from previous outsourcing companies we’ve worked with.
California financial technology startup

The Challenge

Integrate Software Components and Ensure Platform Performance

Based in San Diego, CA, the company offers the world’s only device-free, globally-accessible, digital transaction protocol with built-in identity. Government agencies and banking systems use their platform to enable citizens to digitally verify identities for public services and claim their economic rights.

The decentralized system incorporates a massively scalable payment solution with a multi-currency wallet, document management, and a native biometric identity system. As the company prepared to bring the solution to market, they needed the help of an external application development partner to integrate all the software components and design and develop the application programming interfaces (APIs). This would ensure the system could execute identity registrations and financial transactions quickly.

Another key capability required was fast product demo set-ups to help close new business. And once a new customer came on board, they wanted to quickly roll out the cloud infrastructure to support the solution and get customer systems running as soon as possible.

The need to find an application development partner escalated as the company worked to provide a solution to a government agency in a Southeast Asia country that implements programs to reduce poverty. Their solution offered a way for the program to verify citizen eligibility for propane gas subsidies and to process vouchers covering the cost of the program.

The Solution

Allata Builds Environment to Quickly Roll Out Platform

To take on these challenges, the company turned to Allata, which invested resource time to understand the applications, the infrastructure requirements, and the 30+ technology components supporting the solution.

This engagement phase covered the solution’s front-end mobile and web applications as well as the biometrics applications for confirming the identity of program participants. These included face-recognition and fingerprint software along with an application for conducting background checks.

Allata also designed and coded the APIs connecting all the applications and the back-end database, which emulates the MasterCard debit card system. To automate the workflow of building the application environment, Allata implemented a DevOps architecture to build and deploy new versions of the application automatically.

Another key component designed by Allata is the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment to host the solution. Allata used Terraform to create an open source infrastructure-as-code environment, and set up applications in Kubernetes microservices containers. This combination enables the AWS cloud to easily scale as customers come on board, quickly rolling out new environments for each customer.

The Results

Blockchain System Achieves 99.99% Accuracy

With the efforts of Allata streamlining the platform demo for the agency overseeing the subsidies program, our customer closed on the business and forged an impressive success story. As the first blockchain solution implemented in the target country for a government program, the platform demonstrated 99.99% accuracy and eliminated data leakage. And citizens can now redeem vouchers for propane gas without devices—they simply use the biometric interface at banks to confirm their identities.

The company also gained the ability to quickly demo and roll out the platform to potential customers. Prior to the Allata partnership, the infrastructure environment setup was a manual process that required up to two months to complete. Allata created an automated replication process to stand-up new environments in two days and developed enhancements to reduce the timeframe to one hour.

Another vital capability Allata programmed is automatic generation of jurisdictional logic, which adapts the solution to the specific compliance and financial calculation (such as tax rate) requirements of a country. Given regulations and calculations vary widely among countries, this capability delivers significant value and sets the platform apart from its competitors.

In addition to technical skills to fix code bugs and tie platform components together with APIs, Allata collaboration expertise also played a key role in the success of the partnership. Allata managed the project closely and communicated constantly. This helped confirm the current state of all the individual platform components at the beginning of the project and the desired state for the platform to deliver the value their customers require.

Along the way, Allata conducted many tests to enhance demos so customers understand the capabilities of the solution. Allata also organized the issue documentation process and implemented an Agile system to track feature details so everybody knows what to expect and when new features will be ready.

Our customer is now ready to deploy a solution to the entire world that removes the inability to prove identity—the single most significant barrier to economic inclusion. Organizations requiring ID verification, a wallet, and transaction system to exchange value can work with customers who do not have smart devices or bank accounts. This enables people across the globe to receive the resources they need to stabilize their economic viability.