Faris Aziz

Staff Software Engineer @ Smallpdf

From Fragile to Future-Proof: Solving Web Monetization Chaos with Payment Systems That Scale

When expanding into global markets, payment integration becomes a technical and strategic challenge. Relying on a single provider like Stripe is fantastic until you hit a certain scale, from reliability issues to compliance roadblocks. This talk explores payment orchestration—treating payments as a dynamic system rather than a static feature—to balance cost, conversion rates, and compliance. I’ll share real-world lessons from handling multi-gateway integrations, regulatory complexities, and millions in transactions, helping you design Frontend payment architectures that scale without breaking a sweat.

Bio

Faris is an experienced engineer, international conference speaker, and workshop instructor with a focus on React, Next.js, web architecture, and resilient system design. He has a strong interest in startups, having worked at early-stage companies in roles ranging from founding teams to scaling organizations from 1 to 100 people. His expertise includes engineering leadership, designing career ladders from scratch, and managing teams of over 10 engineers. As a front-end subject matter expert, Faris has built systems used by millions of users. His work spans greenfield projects and long-running products. He has worked in industries including Connected TV, Fintech, SaaS, and Fitness, with companies such as Smallpdf, Fiit, Discovery, GCN, Eurosport, and Navro (formerly Paytrix). Faris focuses on building user-centric, performant, and maintainable applications. He takes a particular interest in observability and monitoring, making systems easier to debug and improve. He shares his knowledge by organizing the Zurich.js meetup in Switzerland and speaking at international conferences on web development, engineering leadership, and scalable systems. In his spare time, Faris contributes to developer tools like Raycast and reflects on questions like why the build works on his machine but fails everywhere else.