Capacity and expertise for international growth
Recharge.com sells branded payments in 150 countries. With strong growth in products, languages, and traffic they were not looking for one-off delivery, but a team with DevOps, performance, and high-traffic expertise.
Client
- Industry
- FinTech
- Location
- Amsterdam
Team
Recharge.com is a Dutch FinTech company that sells branded payments: mobile credit, prepaid credit cards, gift cards, and gaming credits. The platform runs in 150 countries, each with its own payment methods. When we started there were about 30 people; by now there are more than 100. Software, infrastructure, and team have to grow at that pace.
The situation
A fast-growing scale-up with scale challenges
At Recharge, visitor numbers, payment methods, product range, languages, and countries grow at the same time. For further expansion inside and outside the EU the platform had to support multiple languages and product lines without compromising performance or reliability.
Extra development capacity only helps if it also adds substantive value. Recharge was not looking for loose executors alongside freelancers, but a team that understands what online Glossary · In briefscalabilityScalability is the extent to which software, infrastructure or a process can handle more or less work without major rebuilding or unacceptable performance loss.Read more demands of high-traffic applications and the infrastructure behind them.
We want to keep up with our growth, without compromising on performance, scalability, and reliability.
The question behind the question
Further than extra hands on the keyboard
As Recharge sought to expand development capacity, they looked at whether a remote team could connect to their existing organization. The need went further than production support.
Recharge needed additional expertise in DevOps, performance optimization, and deploying web applications under high load. The team wanted developers who could also advise on infrastructure and the experience of users in different countries.
Approach
Connecting specifically to bottlenecks
We first mapped where the internal gaps were and connected to those specifically. Our experience with DevOps, high-traffic applications, and performance challenges fitted what Recharge needed in a phase where every second of load time and every Glossary · In briefdeploymentA deployment is the process of installing and starting a chosen software version in a target environment so it can be tested or used there.Read more path has direct business impact.
That meant more than building along. It also meant reasoning through scalability, infrastructure, and the effects of a worldwide rollout. Where is delay in the chain, what yields the most gain per second, and which choice belongs in the application and which in the surrounding environment?
What we add
Performance as a business factor With high visitor numbers, an error can affect many users. Shorter load times help visitors browse products and complete purchases.
Scalability beyond code For worldwide growth you also need to think about infrastructure, compression, data sources, and the experience of users on slower networks or older phones.
DevOps as a grey area An engineer who understands both the application and the infrastructure can make better choices than a pure SysOps or pure development approach alone.
Technical deep dive
High traffic asks for targeted optimization
Glossary · In briefdatabaseA database is a structured collection of data that software can store, retrieve and modify. A database management system controls access to that data.Read more queries, asset compression, image size, and lazy loading all affect performance. We first investigate what causes the most delay and which change could reduce load times the most.
At Recharge that weighs extra. With hundreds of requests per minute the software must stay fast and reliable under Glossary · In briefpeak loadPeak load is the temporarily high demand on a system when many users, requests or tasks need capacity at the same time.Read more. An error that seems acceptable at low traffic quickly hits hundreds of users per day at this volume.
Worldwide growth asks for different assumptions
Anyone who designs only from the Netherlands underestimates how different the digital reality is elsewhere. In many markets people browse on a phone that is several years old, not on fiber with a recent device. Server location, compression, and payload size then determine whether a checkout is completed.
The same applies to infrastructure choices. Servers in Europe make sense for Dutch users, but are slow for someone in Chile or Mexico. Those markets are exactly interesting for a platform that wants to scale internationally.
Result
A lasting partner for further growth
We supported Recharge with development and advice on performance, deployment, and feasibility. This helped prepare the platform for further international growth.
That collaboration grew into a long-term relationship. Recharge involves us regularly because we do not only execute, but also think ahead about improvements and practical choices for the next phase.
Key takeaways
With strong growth in countries, languages, and traffic, capacity alone is not enough; you need expertise in DevOps, performance, and high-traffic architecture.
Performance optimization starts at the biggest bottleneck, not at a random checklist; in e-commerce every second translates directly into conversion.
Worldwide rollout asks for different assumptions about network, devices, and server location than a purely Dutch context.
A long-term relationship forms when you think along about feasibility and architecture, not only when you close tickets.
OUR WORK
