Meet Manjil — The Man That Cometh When the Hour Arrives

Hey! Welcome to Zeta Scoops — an infinite-part series on the life and times of Zetanauts modernizing banking tech globally.

In this edition, we delve into the incredible tale of Manjil’s race against time to get NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) certification in only four days (generally takes about two months).

Mission Impossible?

Manjil’s story reminds you of a movie where you wish you were the protagonist. It’s one with twists and turns and terrible news that eventually becomes a lasting triumph. Manjil tells his story with great pride and some sheepish humor; according to his own analysis, moments from this story rank in the top three best moments of his life.

It began with an email that stirred up a reasonably calm evening. The Global Fintech Fest (GFF) — one of the world’s biggest banking tech and fintech meet-ups that pulls the industry’s stalwarts, think: Finance Ministers, top RBI officials, leading Bankers; the whole nine yards — was around the corner — four months away, TBH. Zeta, contending to be a leader in the Banking Tech space, had to come through with the goods to back its claim.

But with four months, including weekends, it was debated whether participating was even an option. The decision was swift and not surprising — Zeta would enable its client, the biggest bank in India & top 10 globally — to participate and present a live demonstration of UPI transactions on credit, something that had never been done before. “When GFF was announced, we weren’t even sure if we could demo our product. We had to consider alternatives, like presenting a PowerPoint instead,” says Manjil,

“It became clear on day one that if we were to pull this off, we’d need buy-in from everyone.” recounts Manjil. “We’d require immaculate communication, long hours, strong coffee, and steely resolve,” he adds.

The project would need the creation of engineering and product infrastructures, but most importantly — certificates of clearance from NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) — the governing body for UPI transactions. NPCI ensures that any entity dealing in transactions and payments goes through NPCI’s clearance procedures and acquires certificates after passing a battery of tests. This part typically takes about 5–6 months.

Manjil was leading the team responsible for getting certifications. It’s good to know that Zeta’s client might not have been a part of the GFF if the certification didn’t go through, which would be a big BIG blow to its reputation. Moreover, teams were working in parallel to create services that would be integrated with the payment system. So, if the certifications didn’t go through, the other team’s work would go to waste.

Getting the Ducks in a Row

Prizes for guessing are none because everyone knew that getting certified meant going unconventional. Getting certified was a pretty straightforward test: The NPCI would give scenarios on its website that the team had to execute successfully; these are various payment scenarios that may arrive during transactions: payment failure, network issues, incorrect passwords, etc. These were a total of 200 scenarios that needed to be cracked.

Each scenario needed its separate flow, and creating 200 flows — each flow taking a day — was an exercise that took too long. It was time to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Getting the solution right

To clear all the scenarios, Manjil deployed the following steps:

1. Leveraging AI for data generation:

• Leveraged AI tools to generate input required for all the test scenarios, user data generation, and many more
• Co-Pilot helped us a lot to write test scenarios and test locally before going for certification

2. Optimizing testing processes with modern tools:

• Leveraged Javascript to create a mini tool to fill the form and submit it for each scenario. Input generated by AI platform and this tool rapidly increased the rate of submitting test cases as manually entering required inputs was totally omitted

3. Constant alignment with NPCI: The communication lines with NPCI were kept hot, and the team ensured confirmation and alignment with the NPCI at every step. The last thing the team wanted was errors because of miscommunications.

The process worked like clockwork, and the team cleared all the scenarios in a matter of 4 days.

We got the certification to present our demo at the GFF.

The D-Day

Come D-DAY; our client demonstrated UPI transactions on credit at the biggest Fintech stage in the world. The claps and high-five were testimonials of our success, but a bigger win was how we worked in unison to deliver this project. Confidence soared, and everyone at Zeta was proud of our achievements.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief. “This event is a core memory for me now,” Manjil said. “The fact that almost every team in the org came together and worked simultaneously towards making the demo a success is a testament that even the toughest, most complex projects can be executed to perfection if everyone is tuned in.”

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