Trailblazing Legal Cryptocurrency Exchange Service

How the development of a white label crypto exchange with top-level security and limitless customization options allowed our client to partner with one of the largest banks in Eastern Europe and be the first to win users from all EAEU countries.

Domain:
Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Finance

Budget:
$1M+

Team:
5 Full-Stack Developers, Devops Lead, Project Manager, UX Designer, QA Expert.

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Home Success stories Trailblazing Legal Cryptocurrency Exchange Service

Challenge

Digital assets have become an important part of the global economy. Yet, they still oftentimes function in the grey zone due to the lack of convenient tools within the legal field. Indeed, authorities around the world, including the U.S., have been grappling with the question of how to respond to cryptocurrencies.
This encouraged Whitebird to leverage the situation in their country where blockchain and cryptocurrency activities had been legislated. The idea was to develop an efficient and secure solution, which would allow the users to make cryptocurrency transactions legally and transparently.

Tasks

to create an own solution independent from third-party developers

to design Front-end solutions for the client’s part and for the service’s administrators

to meet the requirements of the bank and VISA payment system

to build full-featured Back-end, which will include integration with banking and payment systems and a multi-functional module for managing exchange operations, currency exchange rate, hedging deals, etc.

to meet the requirements of the local regulator in terms of business processes, financial reporting, legitimacy of operations, data security, and fault tolerance

to establish payment processes and user verification methods according to FATF regulations and the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5)

Solution

Thanks to a gripping business idea and meticulous, high-quality work on its embodiment, *instinctools team has managed to develop a completely legal and regulated crypto currency exchange service, which embraces the following key features:

A full-fledged Back-end solution with two Front-end client modules for users and administrators

Automated interaction with the user, incorporating exchange rate offers, submission of applications, and deposits and withdrawals

Automatic processing of user data at the verification stage - from the moment the documents are uploaded to KYC procedure and AML check

Redundancy storage of user and transaction data, access control

Unique, ‘from scratch’ design

DevOps:

highly reliable and scalable solution based on Amazon Web Services (AWS)
optimized usage of in-house and rented nodes.

Control panel for the administrator with:

manual and automatic exchange rate management
possibility to choose the rate – the bigger the amount of money you’d like to exchange the lower commission you pay
differentiated work with VISA cards, depending on countries, status, issuing banks
direct work with system crypto wallets
interaction with users in terms of tech support
exporting reports according to the regulator’s and business requests
notification system for the administrator about the work of the service and emergencies

Integrations:

direct integration with blockchains
direct integration with the payment system
refinement of the tech solution on the part of the bank and Bank Processing Center
customized CRM, specifically adapted to meet the regulator’s requirements: integration into the service of the compliance department and integration into customer support
integration with the identification service, including automated document recognition, authentication, export to CRM
integration with services on crypto currency financial control
integration with liquidity providers, which allows to get optimal rates, hedge deals, and balance liquidity

Key features for the end-user

one-step exchange process – there’s no need to transfer money to intermediary accounts
guaranteed legitimacy
complete reliability and security, ensured by the partners (VISA), audit (Ernst&Young), a big authorized capital of the enterprise, and HTP licence
fast and clear KYC procedure
timely technical support via a special form and online chat

Ernst & Young Audit

Our solution successfully passes the annual audit conducted by Ernst & Young. All the business processes, security and privacy solutions, and our KYC and AML procedures meet all the FATF requirements.

Value

The product created in cooperation with *instinctools combines all the most complex cryptocurrency algorithms and processes in a simple and user-friendly interface. It can be adapted to a specific business model and integrated into any system, which would allow working with cryptocurrency. The development of our own solution let us customize all the service processes to meet the regulator’s most stringent requirements. Moreover, direct integrations with vendors reduce operating expenses and provide a competitive advantage on the market.

This project became a sort of a runway for us, from which we took off to new heights. We improved and expanded our knowledge on work and integration with Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains and banking payment systems. So we are looking forward to sharing our expertise with customers to help them reach their ambitious goals.

Technologies

Back-End:

Java 14
Maven
Spring
Spring Boot
Oauth2
Hibernate
OpenFeign
Logback
Dozer
Swagger
Shedlock
Liquibase
ZeroMQ
RabbitMQ
Postgres
Redis
Redisson
JSON-RPC
Github

Front-End:

JavaScript/TypeScript
React (hooks + context)/React (redux, redux-saga)
Axios
Formik
yup
Luxon
React-router
Prop-types
Styled-components
i18next
npm
HTML5
CSS/CSS3

DevOps:

AWS (EKS, EC2, ECR, S3, KMS, SSM, ELB, Web Application Firewall, Global Accelerator, Cloudfront, Route53)
Kubernetes
GitHub Actions
EFK (ElasticSearch, Fluentd, Kibana)
Kops
Grafana
Prometheus