Unlocking the Future of Influencer Commerce in Portugal: A Triumph in Cross-Border App Development

Retail & Consumer/ Ecom

Unlocking the Future of Influencer Commerce in Portugal: A Triumph in Cross-Border App Development

04 Engineers

03 Months

40%

Increase in Buyer’s Journey

Technology

React Native, React JS, Express JS

Services

MVP, Rapid Application Development

Location

Portugal

Overview

TechVariable collaborated with a client in Portugal to create a unique platform to sell coupons to events, facilitate appointments, and discount special reservations. This solution, characterized by its distinctive user interface (UI) designs, effectively filled a void in the Portuguese market. In just three months, a dedicated team of four successfully transformed this concept into a fully functioning application.

Challenges

Language and Localization: Creating an application in Portuguese for Android and iOS platforms involved several language and localization challenges unfamiliar to the team.
Payment Integration: Stripe, the chosen payment gateway, posed numerous local hurdles requiring constant innovation and testing. Discrepancies between development and production environments added to the challenge.
Novel Invoice Type: The client proposed a new type of invoice for which there was no documentation to guide development.
Payment Flow Complications: Stripe's software often auto-blocked transactions due to cross-border legal constraints, and Stripe was unreliable for testing purposes in India.
Database Conventions: Social media authentication, using FireAuth and Firebase, relied on a database that didn't follow common conventions, creating additional challenges.

High Level Design Architecture

Solutions

Robust Testing Format: The team collaborated with the client to develop a testing method capable of overcoming geographic limitations and bypassing Stripe's auto-blocking problem.
Invoice Type Solution: Demonstrating tenacity and innovation, the team found a solution for the new invoice type, integrating Zapier and Invoice Express and incorporating the client's branding to maintain customer familiarity.
Stripe Language Challenge: The team developed a new solution for Stripe’s language challenges, enabling transfers between connected accounts.
Firebase Usage: The team learned to use Firebase, building rich and collaborative applications accessible directly from the client.
Microservice Architecture: The application was designed and built using a microservice architecture on the backend, allowing for partial releases and extensive testing.