Worldpay Payment-Enabled Apps Case Study

Worldpay Allows Its Customers to Easily Add In-App Payment Processing to Complex Mobile and Web Apps

Business Challenge

Worldpay was looking for an application development solution that would allow it and its customers to speed the creation of, payment-enabled mobile business apps. In particular, it wanted to help one of its clients, Cloudworks Global, more easily build a mobile app including payment and group communications. 

Cloudworks Global was building a universal platform to enable education institutions and non-profits to more easily manage payments, connect and organize members, and communicate valuable information via mobile devices. Its first application, athleticloud, is a mobile information hub for high school athletic directors, coaches, athletes and parents.

Solution

Worldpay considered several solutions, and quickly realized that Alpha Anywhere was the best choice due to both its complete end-to-end development and deployment environment, and because of its ability to create mobile apps that work even when not connected to the Internet. 

"One of Alpha's key features was its ability to work offline," says Bryan Derbyshire, Director of Sales, National Business Unit at Worldpay. "That was important to us because it would give our customers something unique, and would give us a competitive advantage in attracting new clients." 

Worldpay Vice President Hunter Menton adds, "We had a specific development need that wasn't being met — a single platform that allowed our customers to quickly build mobile apps. That's exactly what we found in Alpha." 

Alpha developed an API to integrate Worldpay's payment platform with Alpha Anywhere, allowing apps developed with Alpha Anywhere to directly link into Worldpay's payment services. 

"We were blown away by the level of integration Alpha was able to bring to the API," Menton remembers. "Alpha saw the importance of integration, and brought it to an extremely detailed level. Teaming with Alpha enabled the development of a new way to integrate payment into mobile apps."

Worldpay customer Cloudworks Global was in the midst of trying build a mobile app to allow high school coaches, parents, and players to communicate via a single, integrated mobile information hub. Cloudworks Global had been working for 18 months with several developers to create it. The developers had not been able to build a mobile application that suited all of its needs. 

"We had outsourced development, and it was quite complex, far more complex than it first seems," says Andrew Oldfield, CEO of Cloudworks Global. "The developers we were working with didn't have the expertise that we needed. After ten months of development, we were still only 75 percent of the way to where we needed to be." 

Not only was the development work taking far more time than Cloudworks Global expected, but it was more expensive as well. All that changed when Worldpay recommended that Cloudworks Global utilize Alpha Anywhere and leverage the Worldpay/Alpha Anywhere API. 

"With Alpha, we were able to build, test, and deploy the app in only two months using two developers, while previously six developers had worked for ten months and hadn't finished the job. We delivered the app in less time, with less staff, and for significantly less cost," Oldfield says.

Results/Benefits

Alpha Anywhere's benefits went well beyond speedier development and significantly reduced costs. The software's capabilities also allowed Cloudworks Global to build a more fully featured offering than it had originally planned. Alpha Anywhere helped Cloudworks Global build an app that works even when not connected to the Internet, which was not in the app's original specs, but which is proving to be extremely valuable. 

"When you're out on a football field somewhere, you may be away from a cell phone signal or the Internet," Oldfield explains. "We were able to build an app that still works when offline, doing things such as taking attendance at games and practices, and later when connected, updating the database. That's quite important for a school athletic app." 

With Alpha Anywhere, Cloudworks Global is also expanding its business focus. Rather than build a platform solely for school athletics, it is planning to build a complete solution for anyone in a school system and beyond to manage resources, scheduling, and payments. 

"Alpha Anywhere has not just saved us cost and time, but also allows us to target a bigger business opportunity than previously intended," Oldfield says. 

Alpha Anywhere opens bigger business opportunities for Worldpay as well. Forrester Research projects that mobile payments in the United States will grow to $142 billion over the next five years.1 With Alpha Anywhere and the Alpha/Worldpay API, Worldpay will be able to tap into that growing market and allow its customers to easily add in-app payment processing to complex mobile and Web applications. 

"Cloudworks Global was the first of our customers to take advantage of the Alpha platform and API," says Derbyshire. "We expect many other customers to use it as well to tap into mobile payments. We'll be rolling it out to them in the next year." 

Menton adds that Alpha has been an excellent solution for developing a mobile payment platform. 

"Alpha provides an API and an easy way to integrate mobile payments into our customers' apps. Alpha makes the front-end work easy and flexible, and Worldpay is the global payment provider that backs the infrastructure. It's an ideal relationship," he concludes.