8 Tips Learned from Adding Payments to DoorDash's Android App
Article Summary
DoorDash's Android team learned the hard way that adding payments isn't just about processing transactions. It's about building a system that scales across countries, payment methods, and user expectations.
Harsh Alkutkar, a software engineer on DoorDash's ordering experience team, documented eight critical lessons from integrating payment systems into their Android app. The insights cover everything from architecture decisions to team collaboration patterns that made the difference between shipping fast and shipping right.
Key Takeaways
- Categorize payment methods early: device-based (Google Pay) vs gateway-dependent (Stripe)
- Payment vendors like Google Pay enforce strict branding and UX requirements
- Cache payment methods and card data to accelerate checkout performance
- Ship iteratively to avoid sunk cost fallacy and building the wrong thing
- Design telemetry to capture provider error codes and device info without exposing PII
Critical Insight
Building extensible payment architecture from day one prevents painful refactoring when adding new payment methods and geographic markets.
