About PayFURL
PayFURL is an Australian payment orchestration platform. It sits above the payments ecosystem, connecting merchants to a large network of gateways and processors through one API and dashboard, with smart routing, automatic failover and cost transparency, all under PCI DSS compliance. By the time we joined, the platform was well past MVP: a mature, six-year-old codebase running live in production.
Overview
When PayFURL went through a change in technical leadership within its founding team, we were brought in as an engineering partner.
Agentic AI tooling allowed us to take ownership in weeks instead of months: operational on the codebase within 30 days, owning sophisticated delivery within the first quarter, compliance and live transaction flows intact throughout.
The Challenge
A change in technical leadership meant PayFURL needed both continuity and momentum. We faced the following key constraints at the start:
- An inherited, mature codebase. Six years of accumulated logic, integrations, and design decisions, with limited access to the original architectural context.
- A live, regulated environment. Payments infrastructure does not tolerate learning in production. Stability and PCI DSS compliance had to hold from day one.
- Need for speed. The roadmap could not pause while a new partner slowly absorbed the system. We needed to be productive in weeks, not quarters.
- Managing growing responsibilities. We began with stabilising and maintaining the platform and quickly extended to partially refactor, improve, and prepare it for future growth.
“We had a tight timeline and high expectations — Nomtek delivered. The app became a key part of our sales pitch and helped us open important conversations with partners and investors. What impressed me most was how quickly they understood our goals and adapted the design to match exactly what we needed for live demos.”
Mark Reimer, Co-Founder at Hamelin Tech
Scope of Work
The engagement moved through three stages: understanding the platform, making it safe to change, and then changing it.
AI-assisted codebase audit
A full audit of the existing codebase using agentic AI tooling, mapping the system considerably faster than manual code archaeology allows, and reaching working command of the platform in 30 days.
Rebuilding system explainability
PayFURL's documentation was extensive but had drifted from the code. We reconciled the two and produced updated documentation plus executive dashboards, giving technical and non-technical stakeholders the same picture of what the platform actually does.
Mapping interdependencies
We traced and documented dependencies across modules, services, and integrations — turning a hard-to-understand system into a known one, so changes could be made without unintended downstream effects.
Raising daily observability
Every change needed traceability and an audit trail. We added layers of automated tests and improved daily monitoring, specifically to catch regressions, business logic leaking across modules, and unintended changes to existing architecture.
Stabilisation and PCI DSS-compliant maintenance
We took over day-to-day maintenance and carried out the work required for the platform to remain PCI DSS compliant — protecting its core obligation to merchants throughout the transition.
Refactoring and new features
With the system understood, selected areas were refactored for maintainability and scale, and new client-facing features shipped during what would otherwise have been a holding period.
Scope of Work
The engagement moved through three stages: understanding the platform, making it safe to change, and then changing it.
AI-assisted codebase audit
A full audit of the existing codebase using agentic AI tooling, mapping the system considerably faster than manual code archaeology allows, and reaching working command of the platform in 30 days.
Rebuilding system explainability
PayFURL's documentation was extensive but had drifted from the code. We reconciled the two and produced updated documentation plus executive dashboards, giving technical and non-technical stakeholders the same picture of what the platform actually does.
Mapping interdependencies
We traced and documented dependencies across modules, services, and integrations — turning a hard-to-understand system into a known one, so changes could be made without unintended downstream effects.
Raising daily observability
Every change needed traceability and an audit trail. We added layers of automated tests and improved daily monitoring, specifically to catch regressions, business logic leaking across modules, and unintended changes to existing architecture.
Stabilisation and PCI DSS-compliant maintenance
We took over day-to-day maintenance and carried out the work required for the platform to remain PCI DSS compliant — protecting its core obligation to merchants throughout the transition.
Refactoring and new features
With the system understood, selected areas were refactored for maintainability and scale, and new client-facing features shipped during what would otherwise have been a holding period.
Solution
The usual way an agency inherits a legacy system is slow and quietly risky. New engineers spend months absorbing knowledge that was never written down, and every early change is a bet against undocumented behaviour. That was not an option here.
We took a different route. Using agentic AI for code intelligence, our team rapidly mapped the platform's structure, surfaced its interdependencies, and reconstructed the reasoning behind it. That comprehension was paired with stronger observability, so the system's real behavior in production was visible, not assumed.
Engineers could change a six-year-old payments platform they had not written, and do it safely. What is usually a liability — taking over someone else's complex codebase mid-transition — became a controlled, repeatable process: audit, explain, observe, then build.
The Impact
PayFURL's roadmap kept moving through the transition. Within a quarter the platform was documented, instrumented, and taking new features again.
days to operational command of a six-year-old production codebase
quarter to owning complex delivery
compliance held throughout the transition
Team Composition
A compact, senior team pairing backend engineering with AI tooling expertise, kept deliberately small to stay fast and accountable on a regulated platform.
Forward Deployed AI Engineer
AI Process Consultant
Product Owner proxy
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