Paywise Salary Packaging
Paywise is a leader in salary packaging solutions for public and private entities across Australia and to all Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) organisation types: private enterprise, not for profit employers, charities and the health sector.
Paywise began in 1989 with research into salary packaging benefits and operation, which resulted in the development of Paywise’s on-premise salary packaging software. The software was managed by individual businesses to model and configure salary packaging savings available to their employees. As the industry grew and the legislation and reporting requirements became more complex, Paywise evolved its service to an outsourced business model and cloud based software solution.
With the rapid digitisation of payment based services gaining traction, Paywise sought Adapptor’s assistance to help stay at the forefront of fintech innovation. Working alongside the Paywise tech team and our sister company Hatchd, we collectively designed and delivered a brand new mobile app offering card-less transactions and setting Paywise members free from carrying physical cards forever.
The solution
The app and the API were developed in parallel, which allowed agility throughout the development process and gave us the ability to actively align our milestones with the Paywise API team. A Paywise developer worked from Adapptor’s office one day a week to help with communication and to streamline the resolution of issues. The parallel development allowed us to better accommodate and solve the many edge cases that present themselves in Paywise’s industry because of regulatory requirements. This method meant that we created solutions to the edge cases before any code was written, decreasing the potential for rewrites.
We utilised a number of technical solutions during the development process and worked collaboratively with EML Solutions. EML provided an SDK for ordering digital and physical cards. The EML SDK contained hooks for easy implementation of Apple Pay wallet and Google Pay features.
We built the app using the React Native framework that allowed us to leverage modern development patterns. Our React Native experience contributed to reductions in development time, not to mention the savings achieved developing across platforms.
To create the stylised app header we used the Reanimated 2 animation library. The team did a fantastic job designing and developing the animation using an early release of the library that required them to work around some bugs in the library. In order to maintain the performance of the smooth transitions with each finger gesture, it was determined we should modify and adjust the feature for MVP, highlighting our team's problem solving nature.
Paywise provided an authentication server (supporting OAuth2) and login page as part of their security requirements. It was important that we set up diagnostic logging and crash reporting in the app to best stay on top of issues when they arise and utilised Sentry for this purpose. Additionally, we implemented 8x8 in-app chat support to help Paywise members from within the app.
A ‘Go Digital’ Strategy
Today’s consumers expect services available in the palm of their hand. Now Paywise provides members with management of their salary packaging from one convenient app. Members have the ability to make claims and see their transaction history on the go whilst transactions are fresh in their mind.
Paywise is now positioned as a leader in their market, offering new and competitive products for their members. Paywise intends to transition to 100% digital, removing the need for physical cards. This will remove the use of plastic and the associated costs and waste, making Paywise a much more environmentally conscious company. Another benefit of going digital, is that members will no longer have to wait to receive or activate their physical card, their digital card will be ready to go as soon as it has been added to their Apple Pay or Google Pay wallet.
The Paywise app can be found in the App Store and on the Google Play Store.