PayPay has now grown into a mobile payment service with 61 million users (as of December 2023), which translates to one in every two smartphone users in Japan. Behind the growth of our services, the developers have always been challenging themselves to deliver valuable products to users.
In this edition of the Pay2 Dev Speaks series, we interviewed Munenori-san (Mune), the Managing Director of Pay2 Development Center (Pay2DC), which is PayPay’s first overseas development hub, to talk about the one-year history of Pay2DC since its launch and goals for 2024.
Munenori Hirakawa（Mune）
Managing Director, Pay2 Development Center
After completing graduate school, I worked as a backend engineer at my previous company, where I was responsible in billing management systems, point systems, and wallet-related projects. In June 2018, I joined PayPay during its startup phase. I initially served as Senior Manager, and then transitioned to my current position in October 2022.
Could you begin by explaining the purpose behind setting up a Development Center in India?
Around three and a half years after launching PayPay’s services, we began considering setting up an overseas office. As our service grew, so did the new demand for new features and updates. Enhancing the capacity of the product team became a management concern.
While PayPay aimed for a global product team to develop world-class standards, it was not easy to bring talented engineers from outside Japan.
This is when we opted to venture abroad rather than inviting them to Japan, directing our focus towards India. India produces a substantial number of skilled IT engineers every year, and moreover my personal experience of learning about mobile payments in India during my involvement in launching PayPay convinced me that setting up a development center there would enable us to create high-quality products with proficient engineers.
What led you decide to join Pay2DC?
I vividly remember that I accomplished Day 1 of PayPay in cooperation with Paytm members and this experience had a big influence on my job thereafter. When we were designing the architecture of PayPay’s payment system, we learned a lot from Paytm’s system which had a track record of having serviced billions of people, and I was shocked by how far the world is ahead of us in various advanced technical approaches such as monitoring mechanisms.
Based on my own experience, I knew there were many talented engineers in India and I believed that setting up a base there would be a challenging and rewarding endeavor in my life. That’s why I volunteered to go to India. Actually, I made the decision without consulting my family, and at first they said, “Why don’t you go alone?” But I was relieved that eventually all the family members came with me. (laughs)
It’s been a year since the rollout. How does the organization look today?
In January 2023, the office started with only four employees. Now we are comprised of multiple teams. Since PayPay adopts a microservice architecture, we need to collaborate with the Japanese team when integrating with the microservices they manage. However, we’re gradually starting to complete projects independently as Team India. Initially, we had engineering managers, backend engineers, and QA members, but we have since been joined by infrastructure engineers, frontend engineers, and designers. A product manager will also be joining us soon, which will enable us to handle everything from planning, development, testing, through to the release just by ourselves and deliver products even more quickly. As a result, we will be able to release products even more efficiently. We have been running toward a goal of building a strong core team for the past year, and we are steadily achieving the initial objective by enhancing our common understanding through extensive discussions within the team.
What challenges did you encounter in the past year?
The first challenge was hiring in India, where many businesses from across the globe are fighting over talented IT engineers, and PayPay had almost no recognition. To remedy that we repeatedly posted information in employment sites and asked our fellow Indian colleagues working at PayPay in Japan to introduce people they know, and through these activities gradually built up a pipeline of people interested in us. On the flip side, it’s helpful that people are already familiar with mobile payment and other fintech services in India, since quite a few were happy to join us after hearing that we are like a Japanese version of Paytm. Even still, I have nothing but gratitude for team members who took the risk of joining us when we’re still a small company in its start-up phase.
The second challenge was how to build a team capable of creating products with the high quality required by Japanese users without losing speed. We’ve had members from Japan travel our way to provide lectures, and also had Pay2DC members go to Japan to see how PayPay is used by people in their everyday lives and understand the product better.
We’ve also welcomed Harsh, principal engineer, to Pay2DC to deepen the team’s understanding on the architecture and infrastructure in place at PayPay, through regular design reviews and knowledge sharing sessions.
As the team continues to expand, what are the compelling aspects that make working at Pay2DC attractive?
PayPay is now a part of life for over 61 million users in Japan, hence the scalability, stability, and quality level that is expected is extremely high. Development experience with such a system should help open many doors ahead in an engineer’s career. Plus there’s plenty of opportunities for personal growth through discussing and overcoming various challenges together with other talented engineers.
Another charm lies in in-office collaborations. It’s normal to strike up a quick discussion with a team member sitting nearby, or walking over to someone else from a different team who knows better about the topic. If you’re an engineer it’s common to run into a problem you’re not sure about, and when that happens here, it’s possible to quickly get help to resolve the issue and in turn quickly deliver features to users and grow all that much as an engineer.
Communication beyond work seems to be vibrant.
Last year we celebrated Holi, Independence Day, and Diwali together in the office. In India, I bought three sets of traditional Indian clothes called kurta pajamas and learned the Indian national anthem. Pani puri that we enjoy together after the knowledge sharing session is my most favorite food!
In 2024, what growth aspirations does Pay2DC have?
In 2024, our second year is envisioned as a “step” in the progression of “hop, step, and jump.” The first year was a trial phase where we explored various approaches, even if imperfect, and successfully navigated through it. Moving into the second year, our aim is to replicate successful strategies, addressing areas that need improvement, continue what went well the first time, and learn and improve from what didn’t go so well. Our goal for the second year is to establish standardized systems and processes accessible to everyone.
The second year is when the features that we developed and launched in the first year will be fully used by users, and we swiftly brush-up on the existing product while continuing to deliver services with stability. We’ll be under more pressure, but I’m sure we’ll grow more as a team with dual focus on speed and quality.
For that purpose, what specific actions will you take?
I would like to provide more opportunities for Pay2DC engineers to experience our products as users. I expect team members to take initiative in expressing their opinion and making suggestions about how the product should be, instead of just developing it according to the prescribed specifications. Moreover, by drawing insights from India, a leading nation of mobile payments, we aim to incorporate valuable insights into PayPay’s products, and add value even further.
Lastly, a message for our readers please!
PayPay, with its five-year history, continues to have ample opportunities for growth in the fintech market. Meanwhile, Pay2DC is a recently launched small team.
Numerous new challenges lie ahead of us, and we are eager to face them. PayPay is the perfect environment for those who aspire to continuously grow as an engineer, tackle challenges as a team, deliver value to users, and are committed to develop products with speed and quality.
Our team is still going to grow. We’re looking for new team members with a highly professional mindset and who are driven to create a great product – if that’s you, come join us!
