Modernizing the Core Payment Gateway for a Major Financial Institution

This case study details how Goodways helped a major financial institution modernize its core payment gateway by migrating from a legacy midrange system (IBM Power+DB2) to a modern, scalable platform (x86+Oracle), achieving zero-downtime and a 3x performance increase.

Modernizing the Core Payment Gateway for a Major Financial Institution

Payment Gateway Modernization Architecture

Customer Background

A leading financial institution’s core business system handles millions of express payments and online transactions daily. With the explosive growth in business volume, the original integrated front-end system based on midrange systems (IBM Power + DB2) gradually became a performance bottleneck, affecting the end-user payment experience and restricting the rapid launch of new services.

Core Challenges

The client urgently needed a long-term solution that could solve current performance issues and support future growth. The main challenges of the project were:

  • System Decoupling: How to safely and smoothly separate the tightly coupled express payment function from the massive legacy system?
  • Architectural Transformation: How to replace the expensive and closed traditional midrange system with a more open and cost-effective x86 + Oracle architecture?
  • Business Continuity: How to ensure 24/7 transaction services with zero downtime during the complex process of system upgrades and data migration?
  • Seamless Data Migration: How to seamlessly migrate massive amounts of existing transaction data from DB2 to Oracle and ensure real-time data consistency between the old and new systems during the parallel operation period?

Tackling these interconnected challenges demanded a holistic approach and a partner with proven expertise in mission-critical system modernization.

Goodways’ Solution and Value

As a trusted technology partner, Goodways provided a one-stop solution from architectural design to implementation, successfully helping the client overcome the above challenges.

  1. End-to-End Architecture Design: We conducted an in-depth analysis of the client’s business pain points and technical status, and designed a brand-new, independent payment gateway technical solution based on the Oracle Exadata high-performance appliance. This solution not only has excellent horizontal scalability but also significantly reduces the long-term total cost of ownership (TCO) for hardware and software.

  2. Expert Services for Heterogeneous Database Migration: Leveraging our extensive experience in heterogeneous database migration from DB2 to Oracle, we led the entire migration process, including complex data structure mapping, stored procedure rewriting, and business logic adaptation, ensuring the stability and efficiency of the new database.

  3. Zero-Downtime Data Migration Implementation: We customized a real-time data synchronization and migration solution based on Oracle GoldenGate for the client. Through meticulous preliminary testing and a finely-tuned cutover process, we successfully achieved a “zero-downtime” seamless migration of terabytes of existing data, guaranteeing a smooth business transition that was completely transparent to end-users.

  4. Comprehensive Performance Assurance: We assisted the client’s development team in completing the functional development of the new platform and led multiple rounds of performance stress testing and system tuning. As a result, the new system’s transaction processing performance was improved by 3 times, and the average response time was reduced by 60%.

Project Outcomes

Through this collaboration, Goodways successfully helped the financial institution to:

  • Build a Modern Payment Platform: A stable, efficient, and easily scalable next-generation payment gateway that has successfully supported high-speed business growth for subsequent years.
  • Significantly Reduce IT Costs: Eliminated dependence on expensive midrange systems, drastically reducing hardware maintenance and software licensing fees.
  • Enhance Market Competitiveness: The agile system architecture enabled them to respond more quickly to market changes and launch innovative financial products.

The success of this project once again demonstrates Goodways’ professional capabilities and leadership in the modernization of core systems in the financial industry.