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Payments Platform Migration

Contributed to major platform transition that led to $1B company valuation and acquisition by Global Payments.

June 1, 2023
ReactNode.jsPHPLaravelMySQLCI/CD

Overview

I was a key contributor to Zego's transformational migration from Payment 1.0 to Payments 2.0. This multi-year effort modernized the entire payment infrastructure, ultimately contributing to the company being valued at $1 billion and acquired by Global Payments.

The Challenge

The legacy Payment 1.0 system had served the company well but was reaching its limits:

  • PHP monolith made it difficult to scale and deploy independently
  • Tightly coupled architecture meant changes in one area could break others
  • Manual deployments were slow and error-prone
  • Limited testing made refactoring risky
  • Technical debt was slowing down feature development

Migration Strategy

We adopted a strangler fig pattern to gradually replace the monolith:

Phase 1: New Frontend

Built a modern React frontend that initially communicated with the legacy backend through an API adapter layer.

Phase 2: Extract Services

Identified bounded contexts within the monolith and extracted them as independent Node.js microservices. An API gateway routes traffic to the new services while a legacy adapter maintains connectivity to the shrinking PHP monolith during the transition.

Phase 3: CI/CD Modernization

Implemented automated pipelines for testing, building, and deploying services independently.

Technical Contributions

Service Extraction

Led the extraction of several key services from the PHP monolith:

  • Designed service boundaries using domain-driven design principles
  • Implemented event-driven communication between services
  • Created data migration strategies to move data without downtime

CI/CD Pipeline

Built modern deployment pipelines with automated linting, testing, staging deployments, integration tests, and production releases.

React Frontend

Contributed to the new React frontend:

  • Component library with consistent design patterns
  • State management using React Query for server state
  • Performance optimization for large data tables

Results

  • $1B valuation achieved after platform modernization
  • Acquired by Global Payments validating the technical investment
  • Deployment frequency increased from monthly to daily
  • Mean time to recovery reduced from hours to minutes
  • Developer productivity significantly improved

Lessons Learned

  1. Incremental migration reduces risk: The strangler fig pattern allowed us to migrate gradually without big-bang releases
  2. Invest in automated testing: Comprehensive tests gave us confidence to refactor aggressively
  3. Communication is key: Regular syncs between teams prevented integration issues
  4. Documentation matters: Clear API contracts and architecture diagrams were essential for coordination