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Versapay: Digital Payments Mobile Strategy

Foxbox rounded out 2022 with a flurry of new activity.

Both figuratively: we’ve adopted a new Centers for Excellence organizational model to help our teams increase collaboration, personal growth, and continue to deliver stellar results for our clients.

And literally: I moved to Minneapolis, barely, as snowstorms left me stranded in the middle of Northern Iowa.

2022 Q4 Foxbox Founders Update

Foxbox rounded out 2022 with a flurry of new activity.

Both figuratively: we’ve adopted a new Centers for Excellence organizational model to help our teams increase collaboration, personal growth, and continue to deliver stellar results for our clients.

And literally: I moved to Minneapolis, barely, as snowstorms left me stranded in the middle of Northern Iowa.

Nothing makes me more proud as a leader than getting to publicly celebrate our team’s work. With that in mind, we published two case studies that I’ve been eager to share.

Rain is a Bahrain-based cryptocurrency brokerage aiming to expand to new markets and deliver their 1mm+ users the type of consistent, credible and seamless experience expected from dominant brokerages. Through a custom headless CMS platform, Contentful, and a revamped mobile application, we equipped Rain with the tools necessary to adapt quickly and grow confidently.

Foxbox proved to be an invaluable partner in bringing Rain 2.0 to life. The headless CMS was a game changer for our marketing and growth teams, and their ability to solve problems collaboratively meant we were always in good hands.

Prior to being acquired by Versapay, DadeSystems was an early pioneer in large-scale, AI-based payment processing. As they struggled to deliver a top-tier mobile application alongside its renowned desktop platform, we helped them bring their vision to life.

With a focus on automated mobile end-to-end testing and proactive maintenance, we not only rebuilt the Versapay Cash Application but have become a vital partner in Versapay’s ability to serve their customers with speed and ease.

Foxbox absolutely chewed up our backlog. They worked like surgeons.


Doug Hathaway, VP of Engineering, Versapay

I’ve asked Joseph, Director of Delivery, to share details of our new organizational model

We push our clients to never stay stagnant, even amidst success and growth. In the spirit of taking our own medicine, we’ve reorganized Foxbox under a Centers for Excellence model to deliver our clients deep expertise, agility and speed they can feel from Day 1.

The short of it: our new model for delivery means our engineering teams are embedded alongside project management teams to break down silos and bring key areas of talent even closer to our clients.

Aligning Expertise to our Client’s Challenges

Greater lateral capabilities means that as our customers’ needs change, we’re built to adapt faster than ever before.

Not only does this model cultivate better cross-team collaboration, but our teams are excited because it provides a range of career growth paths that go beyond typical management-focused models.

Patrick and I moved to Minneapolis! Turns out the mid-December snowstorms that hit the Midwest made for a less-than-ideal time to pack your life in a semi-truck and drive through vast open cornfields. We started the 377 mile journey separately: Patrick made it, barely, then they closed the highway. I was stopped by an impassable snow bank and spent the night in a motel in Northern Iowa. My movers got 

 in a snowbank, while driving in a whiteout, and spent the night at -10℉ in their truck

 We eventually made it, days later, and if my frozen espresso machine is the most significant casualty of the experience, I’m calling it a success.

Rain, a cryptocurrency brokerage with over $2 billion needed to deliver a consistent and seamless user experience in order to compete with global brokerages.

How Foxbox Helped a Crypto Brokerage Deliver Speed and Trust to its Users

 is a licensed, Bahrain-based cryptocurrency brokerage that services the Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa. With over 1 million users, $2 billion in transactions in 2021, over 70 cryptocurrencies available, and over $128mm in funding, Rain’s aim to expand into new markets meant they needed to deliver the type of consistent, credible and seamless user experience expected from dominant global brokerages.

Bring the newly revamped Rain brand identity to life consistently across both mobile and web experiences


Equip marketing and growth teams to adapt more nimbly without development support


Enhance security and user insight within the Rain 2.0 mobile app experience


Position Rain for future growth opportunities

Through a partnership built on close collaboration, rapid experimentation and meticulous execution, we made Rain 2.0 a reality. Here’s how:

“Foxbox proved to be an invaluable partner in bringing Rain 2.0 to life. The headless CMS was a game changer for our marketing and growth teams, and their ability to solve problems collaboratively meant we were always in good hands.” 
- Joseph Dallago, Rain Co-Founder & CEO

Prior to engaging Foxbox, the Rain team’s ability to grow user engagement on rain.com was held back by an arduously manual content management process. Regulatory requirements presented mission-critical obstacles unique to every region. Pages lacked the aesthetic consistency needed to build affinity and trust with users.


Rain had invested in a world-class brand identity. But the limitations of their existing platforms were preventing them from putting it to proper use.

Rain needed something unique: a robust, user-friendly marketing platform that operates like a WordPress website but doesn’t look like one.

A traditional platform wouldn’t give Rain the flexibility it needed, so we chose Contentful, a “headless” CMS. Because Contentful is “headless,” we were able to custom-design the front-end of the website to achieve Rain’s preferred aesthetic, while still allowing for easy composability, and seamless integration with the rest of the Rain platform.

We built a set of components, configured them, then mapped them to code written by the Foxbox team. Rain’s marketing and growth teams can now create marketing, informational, promotional, and even new custom pages without compromising consistency in design.

Leveraging Storybook, a component warehouse tool, users can choose and customize building blocks—images, trading components, features, slides, carousels, testimonials, calls to action, and footers—then combine them to create a page without the need for technical support.

“Rain understood that the user interface is the most important tool in building trust.” 
- Antonio Arista, Android Engineer, Foxbox

Given the extraordinarily different regulatory and language requirements between regions served by Rain, extending the new Rain 2.0 CMS and user experience meant no detail could be left behind.

This included the “support” section of Rain’s website. When users need assistance, a ticket is submitted through Zendesk. Functionally the system worked fine, but a typical Zendesk form had limited options in terms of aesthetic design.

To unify the Rain look and feel across every touchpoint, we built a custom rendering of the Zendesk form to match the rest of the site.

Now, Rain’s growth and marketing teams have the ability to create regionally appropriate, seamlessly created and consistently expressed pages - down to the last legal disclaimer, policy header and rich text component.

Armed with an intimate knowledge of the unique regulatory challenges of each service region and Rain’s vision for growth, Foxbox was also brought in to help evolve the Rain mobile app to match the progress made on the new site.

Working closely alongside Rain’s development team, we helped build the Rain 2.0 mobile app for both iOS and Android on a foundation of security, ease-of-use and seamless adaptability.

Our work included robust, flexible systems to maintain Know Your Customer (KYC) standards required in the investment industry. KYC refers to how critical information about users is verified - including address authentication, lifeness check and other measures to prevent identity theft and fraud. Because each region served by Rain had its own requirements, we built the necessary flexibility in from the start.

Evolving the Rain mobile app also meant helping enhance core elements of a Rain user’s everyday experience. Including new responsive currency search engines and new real-time portfolio views, users are now able to navigate a seamless, consistent and intuitive Rain experience whether they’re reading educational content on the web or checking their balance on-the-go.

“Over the last year, we’ve seen a massive jump in customers telling us how well-designed, simple and easy-to-use the app is.”
- Joseph Dallago, Rain Co-Founder & CEO

With marketing and growth teams now more nimble than ever, Rain is equipped with the tools necessary to expand to new markets, adapt to change and continue serving its users a tailored experience that keeps them coming back.

 Model-View-ViewModel with Google Clean Architecture Guidelines


How We Helped Rain, a Cryptocurrency Brokerage, Deliver Consistency, Speed and Trust to its Users

Prior to being acquired by Versapay, DadeSystems was an early pioneer in large-scale, AI-based payment processing. Due to customer demand, Dade developed a mobile application alongside its renowned desktop platform, allowing delivery drivers and sales people to overcome the hassles of paper check processing with speed and ease. 

Versapay’s Mobile Strategy | Foxbox Digital

, DadeSystems was an early pioneer in large-scale, AI-based payment processing. Due to customer demand, Dade developed a mobile application alongside its renowned desktop platform, allowing delivery drivers and sales people to overcome the hassles of paper check processing with speed and ease.

While the app was well-received and fueled new growth, the Dade team struggled to overcome a critical obstacle: ever-changing iOS requirements and competing priorities were outpacing their ability to keep the app performing at a high level.

The Problem: How to Keep Mobile Moving Forward

While leadership had envisioned keeping development talent in-house, industry-standard struggles with developer turnover and talent retention pushed development of their mobile app further behind the standard of service their customers had come to expect.

The overall app experience began to feel stale and outdated. Error-prone updates and a lack of automated testing only further magnified the pitfalls of releasing manually.

With most of their development talent specializing in Ruby on Rails, investing in a top-notch mobile customer experience meant enlisting world-class React Native developers.

“It started as a rescue operation,” recalls DadeSystems VP of Engineering Doug Hathaway.

Engaged to lead Versapay’s mobile engineering effort, progress was strong and steady.

 
Doug Hathaway, VP of Engineering, Versapay

Leveraging Foxbox Digital’s deep React Native experience, not only was tech debt quickly paid down and their library updated, but fixes to the mobile app’s foundation meant that future maintenance could be done proactively, ensuring that evolutions in operating systems wouldn’t cause Versapay to fall behind again.

Our implementation of a new CI/CD pipeline transformed how we brought the Versapay, Cash Application to market. It’s fast, reliable, and automated with the push of a button.

Through the integration of Sauce Labs, Semaphore CI, and our own development magic, we delivered Versapay the value of automated mobile end-to-end testing without burning substantial additional resources and time.


Every time we build a feature, every pull request, every commit is automatically tested on real devices to make sure it’s working as expected. 


Katharine Padilla, Sr. Mobile Engineer, Foxbox

Having initially resisted the idea of enlisting outside development help, our close partnership with Versapay has transformed how they serve their customers.

Prior to engaging Foxbox, they released updates to the mobile app every two months. Now they’re released every two weeks. The release process itself, previously a 3-5 hour manual process, is also now down to just 30 minutes, adding valuable predictability to daily operations.

Their new carefully documented build process, automated testing system, and ability to adapt quickly now means a new custom build request from a client no longer travels along the hazardous road of human error it once did.

Reduced errors have dramatically improved customer satisfaction, to the tune of a 99.32% success rate. And perhaps most importantly, stability has never been stronger. Versapay’s automated test suite means releases are pushed with full confidence that existing functionality will be unaffected.

When I’m working with Versapay, I don’t feel like a contractor. It feels like I’m part of their team.

 
Anastasiia Kraineva, Senior Agile Delivery Consultant, Foxbox 

A relationship built on proactive maintenance means always looking ahead. Which is why, as Versapay’s mobile engineering partner, we’re also migrating the entire code base to TypeScript.

So whoever is at the helm of the mobile app in the future, the code is safer, cleaner, and easier to read than ever before.

Refactoring to a statically-typed safe language during both development and testing means reliability is constantly improving and errors are kept to a minimum.


Through the acquisition of DadeSystems by Versapay, our partnership continues to be one built  on trust, predictability, and the peace of mind of knowing a critical piece of your business is always in good hands.


They’ve required zero hand holding from day one. It feels like a true partnership.


Doug Hathaway, VP of Engineering, Versapay

 Webdriver.io, Appium, Saucelabs, JavaScript

Looking to transform how you serve your customers?

How We Put Stability, Predictability & Speed at the Heart of Versapay’s Mobile Strategy 

While Q3 included a couple humbling external recognitions of that growth, I’m most proud of how our team continues to find new ways to solve problems for our clients like Stormwind and OrangeQC.

2022 Q3 Foxbox Quarterly Update - We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time

We made the Inc 5000 — and ranked top 2%!

I’m proud to say that Foxbox has made it on the 

 with an overall rank of 121! We ranked 11th among software companies. The Inc 5000 is the list of America’s fastest-growing private companies, and we grew faster than 98% of them with a 3,735% three-year growth. 

Thank you to our team, partners, and clients for making this happen.

I’m also thrilled to showcase some outstanding recent work with two new client case studies.

, an IT training company, had outgrown their e-learning platform. They hired an outside firm to build a new platform, but the firm struggled with development. We took over, stabilized development, and successfully brought version 2.0 to market.

”Getting referred to Foxbox was the best thing that ever happened. They jumped into an existing messy database and codebase and made productive changes very quickly. They managed the entire process flawlessly from start to finish. They are easily one of the best agencies I’ve ever worked with.”

-Tom Graunke, Chairman & CEO, StormWind Ventures

 a leading inspection platform, approached us to modernize their Android application. We rebuilt it from the ground up to increase stability, scalability, and speed of feature development. We released the new Android app in just two months. Then we went to work modernizing their iOS mobile app and building new capabilities onto their web application.

”Foxbox helps us differentiate ourselves in a traditionally paper-based industry. They helped us bring a modern approach to our application and deliver value to our users.”

The rumblings of the economy continue to grow louder and louder. Here’s how we are getting through it:

 for startups and SMBs. Clients often come to us when they want to create a robust, scalable product with a seamless user experience.

 for a large healthcare company. Other clients have come to us after they’ve outgrown their MVP and their customers want more, like 

With that in mind, we’ve built two new capabilities:

We handle the maintenance and modernization of mobile & web applications so our clients can focus on their core business.

We’re helping a digital payments company modernize their mobile app and provide ongoing support.

With this new offering, our clients have peace of mind knowing that they have a team they can count on to proactively respond to issues and resolve them. It’s a fully managed service with predictable pricing.

As tech companies of all sizes continue to face challenges hiring and retaining top talent, we’re now helping connect businesses with the developers, product managers, delivery specialists and designers they need.

For example, we’re helping Rain, a crypto exchange, accelerate development of their new platform across mobile and web through a dedicated team of engineers they can count on.

So if you know anyone who wants to create an impactful digital product, maintain an application, or fill a few key roles, 

Inc. Magazine announced Foxbox Digital ranks No. 121 on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Foxbox Digital Ranks No. 121 on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List

On August 16, 2022, Inc. Magazine announced 

 ranks No. 121 on the annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Marked by a 3,735 percent revenue growth over three years, Foxbox Digital is experiencing its most dramatic period of expansion, now boasting over 75 team members in seven offices.

“It’s an honor to see Foxbox Digital included in the Inc. 5000 list,” says Foxbox Digital Founder & CEO Rob Volk, “it’s both humbling and energizing to see our name alongside so many companies I deeply admire.”

Headquartered in Chicago with development teams throughout Latin America, Foxbox exists to help companies solve problems with technology. The agency specializes in digital product development, design, and software engineering.

Whether it’s working with high-growth startups or Fortune 500 brands, Volk credits the agency’s success to its focus on not just building great digital products, but successfully bringing them to market.

“The world has changed dramatically in the last few years,” Volk says, “and I’m extremely proud of how we’ve helped our clients respond to change and uncertainty with digital products they can’t wait to get in the hands of their customers.”

, a growing $1B real estate firm creating state-of-the-art hybrid living spaces that combine luxury amenities, cultural experiences and shared workspaces. The new platform transformed how residents engage with their space and how The X Company does business. Equipped with faster resident support, enhanced security, and more accessible service data, the X Company is now delivering a resident experience that lives up its disruptive vision.

lead mobile app development partner for a telehealth app

 launched by a large healthcare organization as the spread of COVID-19 was first gaining momentum. Foxbox’s extensive knowledge of React Native proved paramount in partnering with the client’s product, UX, business, integration, authentication, and backend development teams to deliver a secure and reliable experience to users. The telehealth app was downloaded over 260,000 times in 2020 alone, and has continued to play a pivotal role in helping thousands of people navigate the pandemic with confidence and clarity.

, an IT training company offering live and on-demand learning experiences, Foxbox built an unmatched student experience focused on personalization, simplicity and real-time insights.

In partnering with Home Chef, the Kroger-owned meal delivery service, 

Foxbox rebuilt and launched their iOS and Android apps

, significantly increasing app store ratings, meal kit conversations and user engagement rates.

WIth a staff that tripled in 2021, Volk says the key to Foxbox’s success is its expert team, strong culture, flexible approach, and the ability to deliver valuable impact for our clients.

As for the future at Foxbox, Volk says that building on their current momentum means focusing on what they do best.

“We want to continue growing organically by strengthening the core of our business. We create impactful digital products for growth companies. We’re puzzle solvers,” Volk says.

“We encourage our teams to ‘Love the problem, not the solution.’ It’s our way of reminding ourselves to never get distracted by technology for technology’s sake. Our job is to bring digital products to market that solve real problems. So no matter what your field of expertise, the most simple and elegant solution always wins.”

To learn more about the agency’s capabilities, culture and what it means to operate The Foxbox Way, visit 

https://www.inc.com/profile/foxbox-digital

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at 

. The top 500 companies are featured in the September issue of Inc. magazine, which was released on August 23.

“The accomplishment of building one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., in light of recent economic roadblocks, cannot be overstated,” says Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief of Inc. “Inc. is thrilled to honor the companies that have established themselves through innovation, hard work, and rising to the challenges of today.”

Methodology
Companies on the 2022 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2018 to 2021. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2018. They must be U.S.-based, privately held, for-profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2021. (Since then, some on the list may have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2018 is $100,000; the minimum for 2021 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to four decimal places. The top 500 companies on the Inc. 5000 are featured in Inc. magazine’s September issue. The entire Inc. 5000 can be found at 

This press release was originally published on September 27th, 2022 at 

https://www.prweb.com/releases/2022/9/prweb18913332.htm

OrangeQC is a leading inspection platform that helps facility teams track and improve cleaning, disinfection, and safety. 

Organizations like the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, and the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport have relied on it for over a decade.

How Foxbox Modernized OrangeQC’s Android App in Two Months

 is a leading inspection platform that helps facility teams track and improve cleaning, disinfection, and safety. Organizations like the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, and the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport have relied on it for over a decade.

In simple terms, OrangeQC is a super-powered checklist app that allows facility managers to keep a pulse on their facilities by tracking quality control, compliance, and project completion.

No more paper. No more lost inspections. No more manually entering data into spreadsheets.

It was already an awesome app. So why did OrangeQC need Foxbox?

We Modernized the Android Experience From the Ground Up To Increase Stability, Scalability and Speed of Feature Development

OrangeQC was an iOS-first company, but after many years of success on iOS, they wanted to extend their reach to better support Android users. Users asked for it and OrangeQC delivered.

The trouble is that the Android ecosystem is in constant flux, so the constant changes quickly became burdensome for the company to support—and frustrating for Android users.

While most OrangeQC users depend on the iOS application, roughly 10–20% needed an Android version of the app.

Inconsistency was the primary issue with the current Android app. In other words, the app might work on one Android phone but not another.

It was a problem that needed to be addressed, quickly.

OrangeQC Took a Leap of Faith – And it Paid Off

If an Android app doesn’t work as well as it should, it’s understandable to think that you only need to patch the Android version.

However, our senior engineering team did a deep-dive into fixing the Android app’s core issues, and recommended to re-architect the app from the ground up. Complete rewrites are usually to be avoided, but with the everchanging Android landscape, it was necessary to get on a solid foundation for continued growth.  OrangeQC’s options were clear: patch the existing Android app for a short time, or fix it forever with a modern architecture. They put their faith in us and chose the latter.


A Modern React Native Platform that supports Android users.

Foxbox helps us differentiate ourselves in a traditionally paper-based industry. They helped us bring a modern approach to our application and deliver value to our users

The OrangeQC Android app is more stable than it’s ever been, and it opened up new feature development opportunities that were not available before our rebuild.

A flawless launch so great, nobody noticed.

We smiled at the opportunity to transform an app for what OrangeQC Founder Matt Gornick calls a traditionally paper-based industry into something that’s, well, tech-savvy , sleek, user-friendly, and, pardon the pun, clean.

Since this is a platform that’s been used by organizations for over a decade, we needed to rebuild and relaunch without impacting current users.

We rebuilt the app in parallel with the existing one, allowing users to continue using the old version and slowly migrate to the modern application, before finally  ending support for the old version.

A big component of the launch is that the new version didn’t impact production users and the data that was stored on their phones from the previous version. We allowed users to upgrade to the modern app at their convenience.

Since many activities are performed offline, losing this data or forcing the user to upgrade was not an option.

We prioritized the user experience from the beginning, so launching the new version without the user losing their data that was stored on their phones was important, but also a big technical challenge.

The app is faster. More reliable. And most importantly, it’s a better experience for everyone. Period.

So that’s what we did: from proof of concept, to working MVP, to production app—in only two months. Over the subsequent months, we iteratively worked with OrangeQC to roll out further offline support and new functionality to bring it to parity with the classic application.

Modern Application, Fewer Bugs & Happier Customers

I originally envisioned Foxbox as the ‘Android team,’ but they quickly filled other development needs on web and iOS. I’ve never seen a software firm ramp up as fast as they did, and keep quality top of mind.

Now that the new Android app is launched, we're poised to continue development bringing it closer to the iOS application’s feature set. Impressed by the success of the Android project, OrangeQC enlisted us to improve their web application and iOS app.

More opportunities for bigger and better feature development.

The one thing that modernizing the Android app did for OrangeQC is that it allows the engineering team to move faster, and to build modern experiences without worrying about breaking the app as the Android ecosystem changes.

On the web application, we started by adding one of the most highly-requested user features: a Template Library incorporating industry best practices directly from within the software. Now OrangeQC users not only benefit from a world-class application, but can rest assured that they are also leveraging industry best practices.

On the iOS application, we undertook a modernization of the codebase to bring it up to date with the latest standards.

The end result? Polished, robust software that works across three unique platforms: iOS, Android, and the web.

We’re working to roll out new features soon, so stay tuned, Android users. You won’t be disappointed.

Foxbox came through. They did everything faster than I expected, and they delivered. I couldn’t ask for a better team than Foxbox. I’m excited to continue growing with Foxbox.

Inside the Box

Articles, updates, and ideas you can put to use.

2022 Q4 Foxbox Founders Update

How We Helped Rain, a Cryptocurrency Brokerage, Deliver Consistency, Speed and Trust to its Users

How We Put Stability, Predictability & Speed at the Heart of Versapay’s Mobile Strategy

2022 Q3 Foxbox Quarterly Update - We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time

Foxbox Digital Ranks No. 121 on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List

How Foxbox Modernized OrangeQC’s Android App in Two Months