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Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems

americanexpress.io

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Re: Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems

#11

Post by jmpman »

llmslave wrote: post #8

American Express tech is some of the worst in the world among big companies. All of the value in the company is just in the branding. They put some work into the mobile app and the website, but other than that, its a facade.

Having worked at Amex and other huge banks, let me assure you that there's much worse than Amex. Amex's Fraud analytics team was good. Risk was good. Ben's team is good.

Re: Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems

#12

Post by mcintyre1994 »

llmslave wrote: post #8

American Express tech is some of the worst in the world among big companies. All of the value in the company is just in the branding. They put some work into the mobile app and the website, but other than that, its a facade.

A few years ago someone kept signing up for loads of bank accounts/credit cards in my name, with my address. I’m not sure what the point of it was. But while everyone else happily sent cards and stacks of welcome paperwork to me, Amex were the only one that contacted me and told me they’d detected something weird in the signup. They gave me some helpful advice to resolve that situation too.

Re: Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems

#13

Post by mixdup »

physix wrote: post #9

Nobody uses Amex for payments, so the system isn't ever under high load. Just kidding! I find the idea quite good, and have to assume that the amount of payment fails they experience due to partitions/outages isn't very high and that the post-payment reconciliation and reclamation process gives them the liberty to rank availability a bit higher than correctness. One thing that looked a bit shaky was the interplay bet…

>To me that seems to create a window where it might route to the wrong cell due to an outdated routing state.

But if the router sends to the wrong cell the cell will either send it back to be rerouted or it will fail and the router will try again (or report back the failure so upstream can try again I assume)

Re: Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems

#18

Post by simmonmt »

stevefan1999 wrote: post #14

Backing up would be hell

Maybe? If you assume a cell can just disappear at a moment's notice, then I'm guessing you don't even try backing it up. Whatever goes into and out of the cell (request logs and results) gets backed up, and no doubt that's more complicated than a monolithic system, but it may not be so bad assuming the replay systems and global transaction router do their thing?

Re: Cell-based architecture for resilient payment systems

#20

Post by tracerbulletx »

llmslave wrote: post #8

American Express tech is some of the worst in the world among big companies. All of the value in the company is just in the branding. They put some work into the mobile app and the website, but other than that, its a facade.

What are you basing that statement on? It has not been by personal experience.
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