App · 2023

Tenderfoot

iOS and Android · micro-lending · Architect and backend lead

A micro-lending app for first-time borrowers: eligibility in under a minute, repayment nudges that people actually respond to, and a credit file that improves with each cycle.

186k

registered users

90 sec

median underwriting decision

4.6

average store rating

The problem

The lender's existing flow lost seven out of ten applicants at document upload. Underwriting took two days, and by the time a decision came back the borrower had gone elsewhere.

What I did

Rebuilt onboarding around progressive disclosure — eligibility first, documents only after a soft approval.
Moved underwriting to an event-driven rules engine with a decision in under ninety seconds for 82% of applicants.
Designed the repayment nudge schedule against actual delinquency data rather than fixed reminders.
Instrumented the whole funnel so product could see drop-off per step within the hour.

Architecture

React Native client, Spring Boot services on ECS, MySQL for the loan book, Kafka for decisioning events, and an S3-backed document pipeline with KYC vendor integrations behind a circuit breaker.

React NativeSpring BootMySQLKafkaECSS3

Request path

React Native Spring Boot MySQL Kafka ECS S3