High-Performance POS Transaction Processing System

Our customer, an innovative fintech startup, envisioned a system that would connect millions of point of sale terminals in retail and other establishments across the country to a single cloud-based backend, which would allow to track, record, store, analyze, and visualize cash transaction data so it can be used for a variety of purposes (fiscal, retail analytics, digital marketing, etc.).

First Line’s Solution

First Line’s engineers architected and developed an extremely high-performance system that enables over 2.5 million POS terminals to stream cash transactions data in real time to the cloud backend. After capturing the transaction, the system and returns a unique code to the POS terminal in a fraction of a second, which is printed on the customer receipt. Any customer can later go online, find their individual transaction and verify that it was properly recorded; this also enables other services, e.g. taking part in a lottery.

The heart of the system is a very robust, high load, high performance database. The system is capable of processing over 15,000 transactions per second, with peak throughput of over 70,000 transactions per second. That’s over 1.5 billion transactions per day. The operational data capture is powered by Redis, and the persistence database is implemented using PostgreSQL. The persistence storage is also highly secure and uses hashes to prevent any subsequent changes to the captured data.

Results

First Line has developed a system that achieves enormous performance on an open source software stack, and using relatively inexpensive hardware, which helps control TCO as the system is being scaled. The service-oriented architecture of the system provides for a way to continuously and seamlessly add new services in the future. In addition to high performance and success with big data operations, the system will also offer a set of services to retailers around big data analytics and data visualization, such as financial analysis, accounting and bookkeeping, demand analytics, warehouse services, and many and others. First Line is performing the business analysis, as well as UX and UI design for all services.

Project statistics

Team size: 15
Total effort: 225 person-months

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Client References

I want to express my gratitude for all of your team’s hard work, support and extra help. We are very grateful for all that you have done for us.
Senior Project Manager, a U.S. specialty digital design and web development agency

Your quality of work is exceptional, and your flexible approach has allowed us to build and deploy a large amount of complex functionality in a very short space of time. Kudos to everyone for their professionalism and for delivering results that exceeded our expectations.
CEO, leading social media analytics provider

We have never had a better release that we can think of. And that is all because of your hard and dedicated work. So here is a big THANK YOU to everyone from all of us!
Editor, leading Scandinavian newspaper

For a software vendor like ourselves, picking the right development partner is crucial. First Line’s technical expertise and solid project management, coupled with their proficiency in Agile methodologies, have made them an integral part of our product development group.
VP Product Development, leading enterprise software vendor

Our First Line Team has been doing a great job. All of the guys check in great code, and they have a forward thinking mindset, not a feature-to-feature approach. They are also very open in terms of sharing knowledge, which is critical to running productive distributed teams.
Application Development Director, global marketing company

We've all learned a lot from you, and it is great working with you.
Application Development Director, global marketing company

The First Line team has an excellent process and we can learn from your team and improve.
Product Owner, Strategic Software Consultancy

I would like to thank the First Line development team for their dedication and high level of quality in their work. Despite being thousands of miles apart, we have been able to work quickly, effectively, and intelligently. Your team has been a major part of why we have been successful thus far.
VP Engineering, e-learning startup

First Line is a great technology partner capable of delivering complex, ‘industrial grade’ projects. They have demonstrated strong technical competence and solid understanding of the media and publishing domain. We have also been very impressed by the management team's attention to our needs and commitment to our success.
CEO, leading European digital media company

Your effort is the #1 reason that this project is going so well. I've worked with a lot of teams over the years and there are very few teams that I trust and respect. When you are given a task or feature, I never have to worry whether or not it will be accomplished on time and I never worry about the quality - you always deliver.
Architect, Strategic Software Consultancy

The team we put together in the last half of this year is one of the most productive, skilled and enjoyable I’ve ever worked on. It’s great to see the product brought to life, and I’m proud to work with all you folks.
Senior Architect, Fortune 100 company

The First Line Software team is professional, results driven, and proactive. I know that when we provide requirements for new functionality, they will not only deliver on the scope of what has been asked but will look beyond and give insight into how we can make our product even better. It has been a privilege to work with First Line Software, and I look forward to continuing our partnership in future.
VP, global marketing company

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