Sarmad Sabih, Sr. Software Engineer

Rails & Fintech

1. What is Fintech?
2. Security
3. Traffic
4. Analytics
5. Productivity
6. Performance
7. Scalability
8. Fintechs using Rails

Overview

• Financial technology (Fintech) companies offer services such as online banking, payment automation, financial consultation, and investment.

• They aim to automate and simplify the processes of transacting money.

What is Fintech?

• It's especially important for every fintech startup to select the right technology stack.

• The options include Ruby and its framework Rails, Python and Django, Java and Play, Go and Revel, PHP and Laravel, and other technologies.

Why Ruby on Rails is a great fit

• Security is the most important feature for any fintech product, since they all work with customers’ real money. A high level of security and fraud protection is the first priority when dealing with money.

• Web app security requires prevention of versatile attacks including but not limited to cross-site scripting, SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, clickjacking, command injection, etc.

• Most server-side web frameworks including Ruby on Rails provide robust and elaborated mechanisms to prevent a variety of common attacks.

Security

• The demand for fintech services is high.

• Its users are many, which increases the traffic.

• Fintech apps usage rose to 72% in Europe during the coronavirus pandemic.

Traffic

• Data analytics is critical for fintech companies because it converts data into valuable actionable information.

• These companies need data systems that can facilitate the automatic collection and information organization.

• Rails, like some other good frameworks, integrates nicely with most 3rd party analytics service providers.

Analytics

• High productivity is one of the strongest suits of Rails.

• It is claimed that the app building cycle with Rails takes around 30% fewer time expenses than with other available tools.

• Ruby on Rails has a plethora of modules, generator scripts, and open-source libraries (gems) to build a complex app in a short period of time.

• A high speed of prototyping and well-developed test coverage culture are other development accelerating factors.

Productivity

• One of the most discussed considerations for opting for Rails.

• Ruby’s performance is at the level with other scripting languages like Python or PHP. It means that compiled languages including Java, C# or Go will outperform the scripting languages in raw performance numbers.

• It’s an incredibly affordable luxury for all those businesses where the cost of people, not machines, dominate the balance sheet. There are many such businesses today, and Ruby has never been better for those.

Performance

• Scaling this framework allows it to grow and handle more requests per minute.

• Vertical scaling entails adding more random-access memory and upgrading the server’s processor. The aim is to increase the processor’s power.

• Scaling RoR horizontally seems to be the best option. However, it entails converting the single server architecture of a Fintech firm’s app to three-tier. The server, load balancer, database instance, and app instance occupy different servers in such a system. So, you can allocate smaller equal loads to each of these systems.

Scalability

• Stripe – A fully equipped tool-kit to help run and build internet businesses.
• Coinbase – The most user-friendly cryptocurrency wallets.
• Quorso: Financial analysis.
• BrightBytes: School budget optimization.
• Square: Payment.
• Fundera: B2B lending.
• EarlyShares: Equity-based crowdfunding.
• Kin: Insurance.
• Avant – Changing the way people borrow money.

Fintechs using Rails

You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarmadsabih/

Questions?