myPOS Scales Payments 7x Faster with MongoDB

THE CHALLENGE

Scaling beyond SQL constraints

European fintech, myPOS, has a simple but powerful mission: to empower small and micro-merchants to thrive in an increasingly cashless world. From a traditional brown bar in Amsterdam to a bespoke jeweler in Sofia, myPOS gives entrepreneurs the tools to accept payments instantly, whether through a traditional terminal, a mobile phone app, or online via payment links and plugins. The company doesn’t stop at transactions. By offering instant settlement, issuing business cards, and even providing frictionless access to micro-loans, myPOS ensures that merchants get not only speed but also the financial flexibility they need to keep their businesses running. “Small businesses are the backbone of a country and its economy,” says Abdenour Bezzouh, Chief Technology Officer, myPOS. “Our value lies in accommodating the way merchants want to do business and make a living.”

With more than 300,000 active merchants across Europe and more than 1 million transactions processed each day, myPOS has ambition in its DNA. Its aim to increase transaction volumes and merchant reach tenfold means the company is growing fast, but that trajectory highlighted the need to evolve its technology foundation.

The company’s systems were built on Microsoft SQL, a reliable but increasingly rigid setup for a business aiming to mushroom its daily real-time transactions. Doubling transactions year-over-year revealed cracks in performance, resilience, and scalability – and with predictable peaks like lunchtime rushes, latency moved from a technical issue to a business priority. A seven to 10-second delay in payment authorization could mean lost customers and unhappy merchants. On top of that, SQL’s architecture presented challenges for real-time replication across myPOS’s multiple data centers, affecting resilience and uptime.

With myPOS intent on growth, it became clear that a new approach was needed – one that could scale seamlessly, deliver speed and reliability at peak loads, and support innovation across its expanding services. “That’s why we turned to MongoDB,” says Bezzouh. “It delivered both performance and built-in replication for our two data centers.”

OUR SOLUTION

Testing, prototyping, and deploying at scale

For myPOS, payment speed isn’t just a convenience for the merchants it supports, it’s a business necessity. When a customer taps their card at a café counter or hair salon, the expectation is simple: the transaction must clear in three seconds. Anything slower risks lost sales, frustrated customers, and damaged trust. The drive to deliver instant, reliable transactions led myPOS to adopt MongoDB Enterprise Advanced.

The team ran head-to-head benchmarks with multiple database technologies, from PostgreSQL to Cassandra. It found that MongoDB consistently delivered the combination of low-latency performance, flexible NoSQL architecture, and developer-friendly tools that could keep pace with the company’s explosive growth.

Bezzouh’s familiarity with the database from a previous position reinforced the findings. “I used to work with MongoDB, so I knew its performance capabilities,” he says. “The combination of our benchmarking exercise and my experience informed our decision.”

Selecting MongoDB Enterprise Advanced, deployed inside its own data centers, gave myPOS precise control over latency, measured in single-digit milliseconds. Or, as Bezzouh puts it, “Every millisecond matters when you’re standing in line waiting for your card to go through.”

The company didn’t just lift-and-shift, it redesigned core systems around MongoDB. Prototyping proved MongoDB could handle transaction growth across acquiring, issuing, and mobile services – particularly important as 95% of myPOS’s payments happen on the go. On the strength of their testing outcomes, Bezzouh and his team began a phased rollout in late 2024, modernizing the core architecture without disrupting production, ensuring speed and reliability for merchants and customers. Today, MongoDB powers the instant settlement experience that merchants love, while also handling critical security and fraud checks in real time.

OUTCOME

Transformative results: gaining speed, scale, and stability

For myPOS, the shift to MongoDB has delivered measurable impact across performance, reliability, and scalability. The platform now validates more than 1.5 million payments per day on average – up from just 700,000 a year ago – with peaks expected to surpass two million during pending seasonal spikes. “MongoDB is part of the solution that allows us to process more transactions, faster, with no availability issues, and within an accepted time from a customer perspective,” says Bezzouh.

In performance testing, the system has scaled to eight times its previous throughput, with a clear roadmap to reach 10 times more capacity in 2025. For merchants and their customers, that translates into instant, seamless payments – no waiting, no uncertainty, just transactions that work every time. System availability is now consistently above 99.95%, with downtime for maintenance reduced from 10 minutes to just 10 seconds. That stability has virtually eliminated cascading slowdowns and service incidents, ensuring myPOS can meet the uncompromising expectations of the financial services sector. Key KPIs such as transaction success rates and uptime are tracked continuously, and the results are a payment experience that is fast, reliable, and trusted across Europe.

Behind the scenes, developers are thriving with MongoDB. Its flexible data model allows engineers to design around real-world payment flows instead of wrestling with rigid schemas. Combined with MongoDB Enterprise Advanced’s tooling and hands-on support, teams can prototype, test, and roll out new features with speed and confidence. Access to MongoDB experts has accelerated optimization, reduced friction, and empowered developers to focus on delivering value, not wrestling with legacy systems. “In some companies, once the deal is done, the engagement ends,” says Bezzouh. “With MongoDB, it’s the opposite; we have ongoing support, guidance, and a true partnership – we appreciate that it’s not just transactional.”

Most importantly, MongoDB has helped myPOS build a strong foundation for the future. The platform now has the capacity and resilience to support aggressive growth, scaling efficiently and cost-effectively as transaction volumes climb. With technology no longer a constraint, myPOS can focus on what matters most: expanding its footprint, delivering innovative services, and enabling merchants everywhere to serve their customers better. MongoDB is helping myPOS scale confidently – powering its bold tenfold growth ambition, with faster payments, fewer incidents, and a platform ready to bring instant financial empowerment to one million European merchants.