What started as a exploration on reducing our unattended station’s carbon footprint through low-powered computing has now evolved to a full blown prototype that has the potential to make payments simpler and more accessible to young tech engineers/startup founders.
Here’s the inside story: Integrating various payment methods in SEA (networks/cards/QR) can be a real challenge, and it shouldn’t be. There really isn’t a school that teaches you to build boards that interface with single/two message payments infra anymore. [from an engineers view point]
So, we decided to get creative. We designed and built a board that handles all the hardware interfacing with various payment devices to a pi zero with a simple bootable backend service offering straightforward web-based APIs for any frontend developer to work their magic.
Think of it as a “payment gateway in a box” – a streamlined, energy-efficient solution to simplify payment processing. Imagine it as something along the lines of what homebridge / home assistant is to homekit.
While this project is still in its early stages, We’re contemplating the possibility of open-sourcing it if time and resources permit. It’ll be really cool to build a developer centric (and consumer friendly) bridge frameworks to the various payment schemes / processors here in Singapore.