IYAPAY

The Problem

Cross-border commercial trade within Africa and between diaspora merchants has historically been constrained by fragmented banking rails, prohibitive FX spreads, and unpredictable settlement delays. Businesses operating across national boundaries were forced to open separate bank entities in each country and navigate disparate local mobile payment gateways.

The Solution

IYAPAY bridges fragmented payment infrastructure into a single unified API and dashboard. Merchants can accept domestic mobile money, local bank transfers, and international cards, while automatically settling into their preferred currency at wholesale institutional foreign exchange rates.

The platform provides intelligent transaction routing that dynamically switches payment gateways in real time if a local provider experiences downtime, maximizing checkout conversion rates.

My Role

As Founding Engineer & Solutions Architect:

• Built the unified payment abstraction layer that standardized communication across 14 different telco mobile money APIs and banking switches.
• Designed the smart liquidity routing engine for automated FX hedge calculation and treasury reconciliation.
• Collaborated with compliance officers to establish bank-grade KYC/AML screening algorithms.

Technology

• API & Settlement: Node.js and TypeScript microservices with GraphQL API gateways for flexible merchant integration.
• Ledger System: Double-entry accounting database model inside PostgreSQL guaranteeing zero balance leakage.
• Resilience: Distributed event streaming with asynchronous worker failover for uninterrupted settlement processing.
• Monitoring: Datadog telemetry and real-time transaction health dashboards.

Outcome

• Integrated across 14 financial institutions and mobile network operators in 5 West African markets.
• Processed over $15M in multi-currency transaction volume within 18 months of launch.
• Improved merchant payment completion rates from 71% to 94.2% through smart fallbacks.