PayU initiated a marketing project that resulted in a technology refresh

Summary

PayU were looking to consolidate their various websites and decided to take the opportunity to take a cloud-first approach to delivering the service.

Working together we designed, built, migrated and managed the new hosting platform. The hosting solution was designed and deployed to AWS using Infrastructure-as-Code.

This included full integration of AWS’s security services to ensure that all applications hosted on the platform were protected against evolving security threats.

A global payments leader

PayU is a leading financial services provider in global growth markets. They deliver innovative technology that enables billions of people and merchants to buy and sell online. Their local operations span 17 markets across Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

They believe in collaboration and partnerships. That’s why they have become one of the leading fintech investors globally, combining the expertise of high growth companies with our own unique local knowledge and technology to ensure that our customers have access to the best financial services.

PayU is the fintech and e-payments division of Naspers, a global internet and entertainment group, and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Operating in more than 120 countries and markets with long-term growth potential, Naspers builds leading companies that empower people and enrich communities.

Creating online visibility

PayU initiated a project to consolidate their corporate website payu.com and 19 sub domains across the globe, to better reflect their transition from a payments brand to fintech enabler.

The new website needed to cater for centralized administration, customization based on locality and language options, role-based access control and more.

These requirements gave the opportunity to refresh the hosting platform using a "cloud first" approach.

The challenge was that domains were hosted and configured in-country and required lots of effort to curate and manage content. Securing the website and infrastructure in the cloud was a big priority. Equally important, was the customer experience and speed of the website ensuring it did not degrade after moving to the new website.

An infrastructure as code solution

Through the project, we delivered the fulfilment of designing, building, migrating and operating the new hosting platform. The hosting solution was designed and deployed to AWS using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).

The approach of designing with security in mind was key to ensuring the correct posture and governance is in place to support a well architected deployment. AWS Certificate Manager was used to manage SSL certificates with AWS Web Application Firewall and AWS Shield deployed to secure the perimeter network. Single sign-on (SSO) is federated with PayU’s secure identity cloud to manage access control.

AWS RDS was selected to minimize the cost and support footprint for databases. RDS benefits from native support for multi-AZs and automated data sync. RDS is highly scalable so performance can be improved without adding new hardware.

AWS CloudWatch logging was enabled on all infrastructure and integrated into support mechanisms via AWS SNS. This allowed us to implement a new monitoring solution for health checks and availability. AWS Billing was configured with thresholds and alerts to identify cost or scaling issues and so avoiding bill shock. The project was delivered in phases with multiple copies of the environment built in AWS using IaC. The complete migration included redesigning the hosting platform and replacement of DNS service providers, Content Delivery Networks, monitoring and support services.

This was the first website hosting solution that we provided to PayU. The project took less than 3 months from the initial project proposal to delivering the final solution. We proved we understood the requirements and were able to provide reliable consultancy and build services.