API automation for backend microservices (Playtika)

1. The Challenge

Playtika, a global leader in mobile gaming, faced the challenge of ensuring the quality and reliability of their payment microservices, which processed in-game purchases across multiple platforms, including:

• App Store
• Google Play
• Amazon Appstore
• Microsoft Store

Given the complexity and high stakes of handling real-money transactions, Playtika required:

1. Comprehensive Automation: Testing across various levels of the backend system to reduce manual effort and ensure seamless operation.
2. Production Stability: A monitoring and alerting system to quickly detect and resolve any production issues affecting payments.
3. Faster Deployment: Minimizing time-to-market for new features while maintaining reliability.
4. Advanced Deployment Strategies: Implementing canary deployment and fast rollback mechanisms to mitigate risks during releases.

2. The Solution

qantum.one partnered with Playtika to build a robust and scalable automation framework tailored to their backend payment microservices.

1. Test Automation Across the Pyramid:
   • Unit Tests: Validated individual components of the payment microservices in isolation to ensure correctness at the code level.
   • Integration Tests: Developed and implemented integration tests within developer repositories, automatically triggered on every merge request to verify inter-service communication.
   • API Tests: Automated API-level tests executed post-deployment to validate end-to-end payment workflows.
2. Contract Testing:
   • Created contract tests to ensure seamless communication between services, preventing integration issues and enabling independent development of microservices.
3. Production Monitoring and Alerting:
   • Designed and implemented monitoring solutions to track real-time metrics, such as transaction success rates and processing times.
   • Configured alerts to immediately notify teams of anomalies or failures in payment flows.
4. Deployment Optimization:
   • Implemented canary deployment, allowing incremental rollouts of new features to minimize risks.
   • Enabled fast rollback mechanisms to quickly revert changes in case of issues, ensuring uninterrupted payment processing.

3. The Result

qantum.one’s automation and monitoring strategy significantly enhanced the quality, speed, and reliability of Playtika’s payment services:

1. Reduced Time-to-Market:
   Automation streamlined the testing process, eliminating the need for manual QA and enabling faster releases of new payment features.
2. Seamless Feature Deployment:
   Canary deployment and fast rollback ensured safe and efficient rollouts, reducing downtime and minimizing the impact of potential issues.
3. Enhanced Production Stability:
   Proactive monitoring and alerting minimized disruptions by identifying and addressing issues before they affected users.
4. Improved Test Coverage and Reliability:
   Comprehensive testing across the pyramid ensured robust validation of all payment workflows, enhancing confidence in the system’s reliability.

Conclusion

Through our partnership with Playtika, qantum.one delivered a future-proof test automation strategy that empowered their payment microservices to operate reliably, scale efficiently, and meet the demands of a fast-paced gaming environment.