An Operations Platform for Marketplace Working Capital

About the client

A South African FinTech helping marketplace sellers grow without bank loans. The business buys stock sitting in the distribution centre, pays the seller immediately, and places the same stock back on consignment—the seller keeps selling as usual and only pays when a unit sells. They needed an operations platform that connects to the marketplace, runs deals and invoices, reprices at marketplace speed, and gives both sellers and staff a clear picture of cash, stock, and sales. Client name withheld under NDA.

Business requirement

South African marketplace sellers faced the same constraint: winning products, cash locked in distribution-centre stock, and prices that move faster than a person can update them.
Marketplace seller APIs, offers, sales, and warehouse stock had to stay in sync.
Consignment deals needed a legal offer flow, inventory sheets, VAT invoices, and bank payment files—not spreadsheets.
Automated repricing had to apply seller rules (minimum, maximum, step-down) and push prices in batches, continuously.
Staff needed a command view of owned stock, capacity, and monthly sales across every seller.
The product handles money, contracts, and personal data, so identity, MFA, and document hygiene had to be production-grade.

Our solution

We designed and built one authenticated web platform for two audiences: sellers who unlock cash, stay competitive, and see how the business is performing; and operations staff who originate deals, invoice, pay, and run the book of business.

Delivered the seller application, admin operations, marketplace integrations, background processing, security, and production deployment as one system.
Mapped each commercial product—working capital, automated repricing, and sales insight—directly onto software workflows instead of disconnected tools.

What the platform does

Working capital
Offer cart → inventory sheet → acceptance → invoices → consignment tracking → repurchase when the unit sells.
Automated repricing
Competitor snapshots, margin rules, and automated marketplace price updates on a scheduled engine.
Sales insight
Sales trends, DC versus lead-time mix, top products, and inventory and stock-cover insight.

What we delivered

Seller workspace

Dashboard with weekly, monthly, and annual sales, DC versus lead-time mix, and top-selling products.
Repricing with per-offer min/max, enable/disable, winning-buy-box visibility, and plan limits.
Inventory and sales views synced from the marketplace across regional distribution centres.
Inventory sheets and a cart-based offer to sell stock into consignment, including a full-deal option when the seller is eligible.
Account, banking, and marketplace API-key consent, with a production data-protection policy.

Operations and finance

Staff dashboard: consignment stock on hand (cost and sale value), ready value, capacity, and monthly platform versus seller sales.
Deal lifecycle, VAT invoices, and sale invoices as consignment units sell.
Bank payment-file generation and payment-file management.
Document library with virus scanning, object storage, and in-browser PDF viewing.
Configuration, service plans, marketplace setup, and operational reports (repricing process and deal summary).

Platform

Keycloak SSO with MFA, recovery codes, and role-based access (admin, super-user, transaction, and repricing entitlements).
Quartz scheduler and queue workers for repricing, price scraping, offer sync, sales refresh, and invoice generation.
Dockerised services, GHCR images, and a staging-to-production pipeline that promotes the same tested images.

Architecture

A React SPA talks to an ASP.NET Core API and PostgreSQL, with Keycloak in front of the application. A scheduler service does the heavy lifting so the UI stays fast. Documents go through antivirus scanning into S3-compatible storage. A live marketplace integration is in place; accounts are modelled so additional marketplaces can be added without rewriting the core.

Business outcomes

The platform is live in production. It is the system sellers use for repricing and working-capital deals, and the system staff use to run deals, invoices, and payments.
Sellers can access working capital without loans, interest, or fixed repayments.
Consignment, invoicing, and bank payment files run as connected workflows instead of spreadsheets.
Automated repricing can update prices as often as every six minutes.
Sellers and staff share one view of cash, inventory, and sales across the book of business.

Client name withheld under NDA. References available on request.

Tools & technologies

Frontend: React 18, TypeScript, Vite, Material UI, Recharts
Backend: ASP.NET Core, EF Core, PostgreSQL, MediatR / clean architecture
Identity: Keycloak (OpenID Connect, PKCE, MFA)
Jobs: Quartz.NET queue workers
Files: MinIO, ClamAV, Apryse WebViewer
Integrations: Marketplace seller API, bank payment files, transactional email
Delivery: Docker, GitHub Container Registry, GitHub Actions, Portainer, staging and production

React
ASP.NET Core
PostgreSQL
Keycloak
Docker