How do we restrict Cashfree Payments features to a pilot group using feature flags and policy controls?

Rollback plan

• Implement a multi-gateway architecture
• To avoid a total payment outage, your system should be able to route transactions through multiple gateways. If you are migrating from an existing gateway, keep that gateway fully operational as a fallback option, using a smart routing mechanism.
• Define clear rollback triggers
• Establish specific, measurable thresholds that, if crossed, automatically or manually trigger a rollback to the previous payment system.

Communications plan
The communications plan should be transparent, timely, and empathetic. Pre-drafted messages and a clear escalation path will save critical time during an incident.

• Internal communications
• Automated alerts: Set up an alert system (e.g., Slack, email) to notify key internal teams immediately when a rollback is triggered.
• Incident team: Define an incident response team including a communications manager, technical lead, and customer support lead.
• Internal status page: Maintain an internal status page to keep all employees informed of the incident status without distracting the technical team.
• External communications
• Acknowledge the issue: If the performance regression significantly affects customers, use multiple channels to acknowledge the problem quickly.
• Focus on customer impact: Describe issues in a way that customers understand, for example, ""Some customers are experiencing issues with payments"" rather than ""our Paytm integration is down"".
• Suggest alternatives: If your multi-gateway setup is working, you can guide users to an alternative action, such as trying a different payment method like a credit card or another UPI provider.
• Provide regular updates: Even if there is no new information, provide consistent updates to show customers that the issue is being actively worked on.

To prove that a PhonePe update improved team productivity without increasing risk, you need to track and analyze a balanced set of key performance indicators (KPIs) before and after the change. The best approach combines developer and support-centric productivity metrics with critical business and security risk metrics.

Productivity KPIs
These metrics demonstrate that the team is able to accomplish more efficiently after the update.

For the engineering team

• Reduced lead time for changes: Measure the average time it takes for a code change related to PhonePe to go from committo deployed.A decrease in this metric indicates a simpler and more efficient integration and release process.
• Reduced time to resolution (MTTR) for PhonePe-related incidents: If the update provides better logging, APIs, or tools, the time it takes to resolve issues should decrease. This can be tracked for both development and support incidents.
• Increased deployment frequency: A higher frequency of deployments for PhonePe features suggests increased automation and a more agile delivery pipeline.

For the support team

• Reduced average ticket handling time: Track the average time it takes for a support agent to resolve a customer issue related to PhonePe transactions. If the new APIs provide more real-time data, this time should decrease.
• Increased first-call resolution rate: A higher rate indicates that support agents have the information and tools to resolve issues without escalation, pointing to improved efficiency.
• Reduction in manual interventions: Track the number of times support or ops teams need to manually reconcile a transaction or adjust a customer record related to PhonePe. A successful update should automate many of these tasks.

Risk KPIs

These metrics confirm that the improved productivity did not introduce new vulnerabilities or instability.
For the business

• Stable or reduced involuntary churn rate: Monitor the percentage of customers who stop using your service due to a failed payment. An effective update with improved dunning logic and retry mechanisms via the PhonePe platform should reduce this rate.
• Stable or improved payment success rate: Measure the percentage of payment attempts that are successfully processed. A high, stable success rate proves the underlying payment engine is reliable and not failing under the new update.
• Fraud and chargeback rate: A successful update must maintain or decrease the rate of fraudulent transactions and subsequent chargebacks. Closely monitor these metrics in the period following the update. 

For security

• Zero security incidents: The update should have a validated result of zero security incidents or breaches related to PhonePe data, tokens, or customer information.
• No increase in false positives from risk detection systems: False positives indicate that new system behaviors are being incorrectly flagged as risky. A stable rate indicates the new system is not interfering with fraud controls.
• Secure API endpoints: Regularly test and monitor the PhonePe API endpoints for vulnerabilities using automated and manual security testing to ensure no new weaknesses were introduced.

Since Juspay does not provide a dedicated, direct SIEM integration for its Safe logs, the most secure and least-privilege approach is to use a server-side API key to pull logs programmatically from the Juspay Dashboard and send them to your SIEM. This method avoids granting broad, interactive dashboard access to a machine and lets you tightly control the credential's scope.

Rollback plan

• 1. Implement a multi-gateway architecture

To avoid a total payment outage, your system should be able to route transactions through multiple gateways. If you are migrating from an existing gateway, keep that gateway fully operational as a fallback option.

Smart routing: Configure a rule-based engine to send a percentage of transactions to the new PayU gateway. This allows you to monitor performance in a live environment without a full-scale migration.

Automated failover: Implement logic to automatically detect a performance degradation in the PayU gateway (e.g., increased latency, higher error rates) and reroute 100% of traffic to the previous or an alternative gateway.

• 2. Define clear rollback triggers

Establish specific, measurable thresholds that, if crossed, automatically or manually trigger a rollback to the previous payment system.

Transaction success rate: A drop of more than 2% in the payment success rate over a 10-minute period.

Gateway response time: An average response time increase of more than 500ms for a sustained period.

Error rate: A spike in 5xx HTTP errors or specific PayU-related decline codes.

Customer complaints: A sudden increase in support tickets mentioning payment failures.

• 3. Create a rollback procedure

A step-by-step guide is critical to a swift and clean rollback.

• Stop new PayU traffic: Immediately stop all new traffic from being routed to PayU by updating the smart routing configuration.
• Verify fallback system: Confirm that the failover to the existing gateway is working correctly and processing new transactions without issue.
• Deploy a hotfix (if necessary): If the regression was caused by a specific code change, prepare a hotfix for a quick redeployment.
• Monitor fallback performance: Continue monitoring the previous gateway to ensure it can handle the full volume of traffic.
• Perform root cause analysis: After the immediate crisis is averted, conduct a post-mortem to determine the precise cause of the performance regression.

Communications plan
The communications plan should be transparent, timely, and empathetic. Pre-drafted messages and a clear escalation path will save critical time during an incident.

• Internal communications

Notification: Establish an automated alert system (e.g., Slack or email) to notify key internal teams immediately when a rollback is triggered.

Incident team: Define an incident response team including a communications manager, technical lead, and customer support lead.

Internal status page: Maintain an internal status page to keep all employees informed of the incident status without distracting the technical team.

• External communications

Acknowledge the issue: If the performance regression significantly affects customers, use multiple channels to acknowledge the problem quickly.

Focus on customer impact: Translate technical issues into language that customers understand. Avoid jargon like gateway timeout and instead say, Some customers may be experiencing failed payments

When transitioning to Checkout.com, a proactive and structured training program is crucial for your support team. The training should address both the common problems that arise with any payment gateway migration and the specifics of the Checkout.com platform to minimize ticket volume and improve customer satisfaction.