What about repay.me Architecture?
repay.me is an online marketplace that enables its users to buy and sell different goods. repay.me acts exclusively as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. Transport and storage of goods is the responsibility of the seller. That is why the repay.me platform is based on three pillars: marketplace, cashback and advertising. These three pillars, in turn, consist of a series of modules, which will be examined in more detail in the following subchapters.
Marketplace
The basis of the repay.me marketplace is the Intershop Commerce Suite (ICS) from Intershop AG. It has been tried and tested for more than 25 years, and is used worldwide in shops of all kinds, including: BMW, Telekom, Edeka and Mister Spex. The entire platform is operated in the Microsoft Azure cloud to ensure performance, scalability and reliability at all times.
ICS is designed for the operation of an e-commerce shop with a 1:n relationship between a shop operator and several customers. It is based on Java EE technology and has its strengths, above all, in the simple extensibility and flexible adaptation. The challenge for repay.me was to extend ICS with the functionalities of a marketplace. For this purpose, a m:n relationship must be established between any number of buyers and sellers. Some of the resulting requirements are explained in this chapter.
Internationalization
The internationalization of the platform is an important issue due to its worldwide availability. ICS already offers a concept for localization. repay.me will also offer retailers the opportunity to sell products in any currency. For the buyer, all products are converted into their own currency at daily exchange rates and the checkout process also works with a foreign currency. Additionally, the seller will be able to create individual shipping profiles for each country to which the products will be sent. The buyer will then be able to filter the products by available shipping countries. In addition, the seller will be able to maintain product data, such as name and description, in different languages, so that as many customers as possible will be addressed.
Payment Service Provider Connection
In a conventional e-commerce shop, the flow of money takes place directly between customers and the shop operator. For legal reasons, a marketplace operator such as repay.me may only accept payments under certain conditions. That is why repay.me works together with an external payment service provider. Adyen (adyen.com) is one of the world's leading payment service providers (PSP) and offers with Adyen MarketPay are a payment solution for marketplaces. Adyen MarketPay is responsible for processing, splitting the payment and returns of a product (see Figure 20). The buyer transfers the money to Adyen and Adyen shares the money between the parties involved. The seller receives the selling price and the marketplace receives a corresponding commission. It is also planned to use Adyen to distribute the cashback.
The payment function is integrated into the checkout process via a payment page hosted by Adyen and complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This serves to protect buyers from data theft and credit card criminals. At no time is credit card data stored at repay.me.
The seller’s registration at Adyen is possible via repay.me's retailer settings. In the first step, the seller's data is checked by Adyen in real time with the so-called KYC (Know Your Customer) verification. If a seller's turnover exceeds $5,000, an additional ID check is performed. This enables repay.me to ensure that only verified and trustworthy sellers offer their products on the marketplace. Not only the buyer is protected from criminals, but the seller is, too. Adyen MarketPay offers extensive fraud protection.
A payment splitting is automatically carried out when paying with the REME-Coin and a sales commission is paid to the operator of the repay.me marketplace. In addition, a small transaction fee is charged in REME-Coins for each transaction (which is not a purchase) of the REME-Coin. The funds raised in this way are primarily used for distribution in the cashback system.