Latency Limbo
I had an insightful call today that highlighted the complexity of our work and the importance of problem-solving on the go. It involved a big European customer who is about to go live with an integration we built for them, leveraging a partner in Australia for the first time to meet their tight deadline. As a US-based company with offices in India, Europe, and US, this project truly showcased our ability to provide global solutions.
The main issue was latency - specifically, how long it takes for a payment request to travel from South Africa through Australia and back again before receiving either a success or failure response. This process currently takes around 8-10 seconds, which may not seem like much but can be detrimental to businesses where every second counts.
Our vendor suggested moving servers from Australia to Europe, believing it would help reduce latency. During today's call, one of our senior leaders joined to understand better why this move could potentially solve the problem. He questioned both the vendor's testing methods and their decision-making process behind choosing Europe over other options such as Africa or US.
Although some questions were answered during this discussion, watching our leader try to grasp whether this solution would indeed address the issue before committing resources towards its implementation.
This experience allowed me to appreciate just how intricate solving problems within fintech can be; even though end customers may only see a seamless subscription process taking mere seconds, there are countless companies working tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure everything runs smoothly. I'm grateful not only for having been part of this problem-solving effort but also for being able to witness firsthand my colleagues' passion for tackling these challenges head-on.
Initially, joining what seemed like a 'boring' industry has turned into an eye-opening journey where I've come to understand why my founders get so excited about solving problems they've lived with for so long - because, ultimately, we're using technology to make life easier for people across multiple continents!