The Problem We Were Actually Solving
At first glance, our platform was simply a successful e-commerce solution. But the truth was more complex. We had designed it to bypass local payment gateways, because they were either unreliable or outright forbidden in many countries, including Ghana. Instead, we routed payments through international gateways, which provided us with the scale and speed we needed. However, this made our platform inaccessible to a significant portion of our user base in Ghana. We were trying to solve the problem of scaling payments without considering the needs of the users in countries we were trying to include.
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
Initially, we tried to fix this issue by developing a separate plugin for Ghanaian payment gateways, but it was a failure. The plugin was complex to implement, and support was spotty at best. Users in Ghana often encountered a barrage of errors, from "card declined" to "payment failed." It was clear we needed a different approach. We thought localizing payment options was the answer, but what we didn't realize was that this would only address the symptoms of a deeper problem, not the root cause.
The Architecture Decision
