South Africa in decline

“Woe is us, we’re in a lot of trouble” Earlier today, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma announced the removal of Nhlanhla Nene as Minister of Finance. South Africa has been in a decline for some time, and this is the final straw for our economy. Reasoning and research One of the reasons I have hesitated in writing a post about South African politics and economics is due to the depth one needs to go in order to show how and why South Africa is in the state it is in. »

Building a personal banking iOS app

As part of of my project to build out banking infrastructure I needed to create something “above the line” to showcase the functionality. Since the functionality has been implemented and stabilised, I have been deciding on the best way to show what can be done with this, outside of command line client commands to a server. The options for showcasing this functionality came down to two initial choices: a web application, or a mobile application. »

Banking architecture: a first attempt

This post is part of a series on a project I am doing to build banking architecture. In the previous post I discussed using the blockchain as an immutable distributed database store, for handling transactions and more. As with most initial proposals there are several problems associated with using the blockchain in this way, most immediately the fact that there is no incentive for mining the blockchain as Bitcoin is removed. »

Payments processing using Golang: client and server

As part of a larger project of building banking infrastructure, I have begun work on the payments processing aspect of it. This post will detail progress thus far, as well as considerations for future development with a focus on scalability, security and regulations. Adhering to a standard There is currently a standard for a variety of financial instruments in the form of ISO20022. There is a wealth of documentation on this standard, as well as hundreds of XSD files describing each XML structure per type. »

Bank authentication - a better workflow

There is a lot to be fixed in the banking industry. In dealing with retail banks, consumers continue to have a multitude of bad experiences for a vast array of tasks. These tasks can be anything from the mundane to the complex, but they all stem from a similar issue. Banking is a massive industry, and most modern banks are several decades old at least. With the pace of current technological growth, consumers’ expectations are not being met. »

Learning Golang: Build a Stock Notifier

I’ve been wanting to learn Golang for some while. I own the amazing, and every technical, Programming in Go and have been making my way through it over time. I’ve found though that learning a language is much easier when you have a clear project you want to build out. I took a short course on Udemy to give me a primer on the basics of Go and then was ready to build. »

About Me

I am 30 years old from Johannesburg, South Africa currently residing in London, United Kingdom and am a recipient of the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa. I have a decade of programming experience, most recently employed as Lead Engineer at a mobile communications encryption company. My main focus was on project management and product development, working with a team under me to ensure stakeholder interests are aligned with the projects, while ensuring that the software is developed in a correct manner. »