TutiPay 22.2.2

This is the second release for TutiPay, the second tagged release for this month. This release’s focus was to add the required EBS services that we are submitting to CBOS, but it also comes with other features such as Merchant App services and further enhancements. Let’s dig deeper into the changelog.

Changelog

  • Our hosted system is now connected to EBS. We can perform transactions under their QA system
  • Add a new User type to our backend system (merchant / agent type)
  • Add Cash in / Cash out services for consumer
  • Add cash in / cashout services for merchant
  • Add MOHE and MOHE Arab for consumer
  • Add MOHE and MOHE Arab for merchant
  • Add Dynamic fees to TutiPay
  • Implement Dynamic fees API changes (noebs)
  • Add Card holder-deducted fees to the app (Every transaction that charge the card holder will show to the in the main fragment the fees amount)
  • Add merchant settings view to the app and enable it to the merchant (for the testing purposes, it is currently available for merchant / agent and customers)
  • Add Account transfer service to the app
  • Add QR refund api to the app (for merchant)
  • Add transaction status to the app (this actually took us a while to implement, but it is now available for all users)
  • Add acqTranFees to the result page
  • Add IPIN change to the app

Moving on the next release

  • Notification service in the home page
  • Add deep links support to the app
  • Link the app with 2t.sd
  • Add dashboard to the platform (not the app): i.2t.sd. For viewing transactions and inquiring about previous ones
  • Sign up page navigations (should navigate to the main app screen and not exit the whole program)
  • Implement push notifications API
  • Add support to SMS notifications
  • Add support to email notifications
  • Add special alert to push notification services
  • Integrate with Marhaba for payments (remittance) delivery notes

This is also for this release. Check you there in the next ones! 2t!

TutiPay 22.01.01

This is really the first published apk for TutiPay. The purpose of this release is to get a hands-on experience with the app, it is really super important to try on everything and we have that solid foundation to what we are going to do.

You can download the app from our website here.

Let’s start!

Versioning

We are following a calender versioning scheme to indicate our software versions and track them. The other prefered versioning scheme is to use semantic versioning. Semantic versioning is quite popular, but it is not as easy to use as calender versioning. Calender Versioning (CalVer for short), offers a nice way of attaching a date to a version number! So, for our release it mentions 22.01.01 and that denotes to year 2022 (YEAH WE ARE in 2022!), and the month (January), and the remaining digits (01) are the version number (sometimes, it is often we have several releases per month! So, we have 22.01.01, 22.01.02, 22.01.03, etc.). That gives a nice sense of progress.

What to expect?

  • The app is not yet functional. We have not linked it with Solus nor EBS yet.
  • Transactions won’t perform, they will just error.
  • Registration is also NOT there yet, but the on-device mode will work (eg., click on Try Now! button and it will work)
  • You cannot add a card and sync it with our backend system YET. But you can store it in the device (this is also important for compliance actually. TODO: check this with SAM: how to secure card holders info in our server)
  • Settings and profile pages are no-op (it doesn’t take you to any screen). This will be supported in the upcoming versions.
  • The app is not yet ready for the public. We are still in the process of building it. SO PLEASE criticize it as much as you can and share it with your friends so we can have inputs from different people.
  • The app comes with an Arabic support.
  • The app doesn’t have a welcome screen yet, we will do that really later.

So, yeah, let’s check the features and what is missing.

Features

Those are the things we added in this release. More releases will work on what we have now and try to include as other features (without sacrificing the simplicity and the accessibility of the app):

  • EBS Services: We integrated this list of services
    Service Description
    Bill Payment We integrated with Zain and Sudani to provide bill payment.
    Top Up We integrated with Zain and Sudani to provide top up.
    Purchase / Refund They are called special payment for consumer. Currently, this service is blocked by CBOS policies, but we will include in all cases.
    Agent Profile Transfer Transfer money to another agent
    NEC, E15 Utility bills (NEC) and government invoices (E15)
    IPIN generation / Change Services to generate and change internet PIN (not to be confused by the PIN)
    QR Code QR Code generation and scanning for payment. QR is really not working now, but we are including it just so we get everything from EBS, and not having to get back to them again. It uses EMV QR standard 😂. Funny thing is, EBS sample codes WERE STRAIGHT UP wrong about QR encoding. Took me quite some time to get the QR working (but we will have to check). This is for merchant QR, as in a merchant will have a QR printed on a paper or via an app and will show it to the customers so the customer will scan it from their app and perform the payment. The technical name is called passive QR. But yeah, from my ranting about it you might get how i’m excited about it! Really sad that EBS / CBOS never pushed for this service seriously. I have lots of plans for the QR protocol we can discuss later!

What we didn’t include

Service Description Why?
Agent Profile Cash in Cash in for our customers. User experience? What do you think cash in / cash out will work in the app? I still didn’t find a good solution for it!
Agent Profile Cash out Cash out in one of our service agents User experience? What do you think cash in / cash out will work in the app? I still didn’t find a good solution for it!
MOHE / MOHE Arab Those are Ministry of Higher Education services. We will integrate them later. They are slightly more involved than other ones, but we will include them