The Problem We Were Actually Solving
Our client pool was largely made up of African creatives trying to monetize their work online. But when we tried to integrate the usual payment processors, we hit a brick wall: no matter what combination of payment flows and API keys we tried, we just couldn't get it to work. The errors were always the same: "payment declined due to regional restrictions" or simply "your account has been flagged for suspicious activity." It was as if we were trying to solve a problem that didn't exist, but clearly did.
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
We started by trying to massage the existing payment flows to work around the region restrictions. We tweaked the API requests, adjusted the currencies, and even tried using different payment gateways (e.g., Paystack for Nigeria, M-Pesa for Kenya). But no matter what we did, we just couldn't get it to work. It wasn't until we started digging deeper into the problem that we realized the issue wasn't with our code or the payment processors – it was with the underlying architecture of the system itself.
The Architecture Decision
