Intelligent Payments Group

Mobile development

Team extension

Integration

Maintenance

Intelligent Payments Group is one of Europe’s largest payment gateways serving a variety of merchants in Europe and North America. IPG is a subsidiary of EVO Payments, which acquired the firm in 2016. For more than two years, Espeo Software has worked with IPG to launch a flexible recurring payments module that went live in October 2019. We’re currently maintaining platform security, ensuring it complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard — PCI DSS.

CHALLENGE

A flexible payment gateway

IPG came to us with ambitious plans to expand its payments network and needed a few more experienced developers to help them achieve it quickly. The main goal of the project was to implement a recurring payments module so that IPG could offer a flexible payment gateway to its clients. Merchants of all sizes can use IPG and scale up or down easily. We’re also currently maintaining platform security and continue to keep it PCI DSS compliant. Since the firm undergoes routine security audits from financial regulators, we help to keep it up to date with all the latest standards. Part of this was developing ways to store credit card details securely.

Getting fully acquainted with these regulations was challenging at first, but we achieved this and continue to keep the platform secure. Following IPG’s acquisition by EVO Payments, IPG’s reach grew to markets outside of Europe and the company also offers its services to e-commerce merchants in the U.S. and Mexico.

One of the key features of the portal is its customer management function which offers merchants detailed reports on user behavior. This, in turn, allows merchants to optimize their sales process and automate online payments. Smaller merchants can use a dedicated management module available as a website, while bigger merchants prefer integrating with the payment API to schedule payments and receive results. Additionally, merchants can set up a flexible plan and IPG handles the payments automatically. These insights and flexibility enable merchants to customize services to their specific target customers.

Our role

A team of eight Espeo developers and testers worked for over a year to create and launch a recurring payments module.

One of the main tech challenges we faced was the complexity of the system. Adjusting the app to different markets and jurisdictions was another. In Mexico, you have one system and in the U.S., it’s totally different. We worked closely with business analysts, testers, and their in-house developers on the project.

Communication had to be open and consistent. Gaining a full grasp of the project allowed us to find the best solutions and offer ways to best solve the business challenges IPG faces.

Our team coordinated with teams in Gibraltar, Hungary, the U.S., China, and Poland.

We ran programming jobs in Java and PHP to develop new payment channels and support integration with platforms such as Blik, PayPal, Alior Bank, eService, and others.

USED TECHNOLOGIES

Swift

Java

PHP

OUTCOME

We do more than just code. We deliver value.

Part of how we work — and what sets us apart — is that we don’t just follow orders, but also give technical advice. As mentioned above, one of our main tasks was to design a flexible solution for merchants of any size.

IPG’s initial proposal was to use Secure File Transfer Protocol, or SFTP for large clients. However, when we started digging into details, we noticed that it was not optimal and would complicate the end-user experience. So we proposed they use their own API via HTTPS. This ended up being a far simpler solution that ended up saving IPG countless hours of development time and ensures a better UX overall. Our team’s ability to look critically at a project and anticipate the outcome passes savings on to our clients, providing considerable value.