Rapyd held its first two hackathons last year, the Formula One Grand Prix and also an internal hackathon. One of the most impressive projects that came from the internal hackathon, a payment messaging app, allows the user to create a seamless payment using any messaging application such as Telegram or WhatApp to accept payments.
Internal hackathons within a company allow developers to build something new, work with new team members, and present new ideas to one another.
Although Rapyd developers are already familiar with the Rapyd API, the hackathon only lasts 24 hours, and many of the developers try a new language to use to challenge themselves.
Through a messaging app like Telegram, the merchant will send the customer a link that goes to a checkout page. The customer will enter their card details and make the payment. When the merchant messages the customer next time to share about a new deal, all the customer has to select is ‘okay’ or ‘pay now’ since their card details are already saved.
Imagine the merchant messaging anytime in the future about a 50% off deal on shoes, food, or any digital item, and the customer just clicks ‘pay’ within the messaging thread.
“The customer has to only go outside the app to the Hosted Page on the first purchase. But from that point on they can make purchases with the merchant all within the messaging app. This is because in the app itself you cannot send credit card details due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance,” said Boris Jaskerovich, one of the Rapyd developers on the team.
A few of the use cases could include:
Any eCommerce store can message customers to offer in-app return purchases.
A subscription based business messages customers to make in-app renewals.
Building out a messaging plugin that allows one-click purchases for return customers.
Boris explained further about his team’s process and working together. “Since on our team, we were all on the same level, the hardest part was making a case to one another on what use case to focus on.
There were no immediate directives, so we all had to decide together as a team.
Once we decided what to do, implementing it wasn’t so hard. It’s always about [bringing together] the people,” said Boris.
The team used WooCommerce to build their application, Node.js, PHP, and of course, Telegram. The WooCommerce plugin does allow subscriptions, which Boris mentioned as a deciding factor between the plugins for the project.
Telegram Payment Workflow
The diagram describes the workflow of a single payment for the first time user, and a subscription payment for a returning user. The merchant can also accept a single payment for the return user.
Check out the project and follow the steps to get started on Github.
https://github.com/Rapyd-Samples/woocommerce-create-payment
Team members on the project included: Boris jaskerovich, Slav Khizverg, David Furman, Yahalom Baron, Linoy Palas, and Ariel Cohen.
Rapyd has already held two hackathons this year under the Hack the Galaxy series, a third currently running: Build the Galaxy’s Best Super App, a fourth dropping after, and a final Rapyd Demo Days presentation for the top winners to compete for a trip to the edge of space.
Sign up now to compete in the Hackathon: Galaxy’s Best Super App, or join Discord to follow along.
Photo by Adem AY.
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