Swvl’s in-house product team needed additional engineering capacity to strengthen its technology infrastructure, accelerate feature delivery, and support expansion across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Provided four squads that worked in six key areas: M-pesa and EBANX integrations, refund to source capability, partners portal development, supply pricing automation, and dispatcher & ETA optimization.
The solutions eliminated thousands of manual work hours, delivered 98% driver payout accuracy, enabled cashless payments in Kenya, and supported Swvl’s entry into Brazil with minimal disruption.
Meet the startups changing mobility for emerging middle classes - TechCrunch
Swvl, first $1.5bln unicorn from the Middle East to list on Nasdaq - Zawya
Very proud of the team (Engineering and Product) that built a brand new product and microservice in a quarter! That is very impressive especially since they were all new to Swvl. Excited for what we are going to achieve in Q2 together. Keep up the great work!
Mostafa Zaher
Senior Engineering Manager
Marketplace at Swvl
Swvl is a global provider of technology-enabled mass transit and ridesharing services. The Dubai-based Egyptian startup became the first Middle Eastern unicorn to be listed on Nasdaq and was expanding across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
To support this growth, Swvl needed to strengthen its technology infrastructure and introduce new product capabilities. It sought a technology partner that could augment its in-house product development team with engineers capable of accelerating feature implementation and responding efficiently to emerging market requirements.
The engagement required strong engineering, communication, and problem-solving capabilities to ensure close collaboration with Swvl’s existing product teams.
Tintash deployed four specialized engineering squads to address Swvl’s payment, refund, partner management, supply pricing, and ETA requirements. The squads worked closely with Swvl’s product teams to accelerate development and integrate new capabilities with its existing technology stack.
1. Expanded Payment Capabilities Across New Markets
Tintash integrated M-Pesa, Kenya’s leading mobile money transfer service, into Swvl’s booking system to support cashless transactions. Because M-Pesa processed payments asynchronously, Tintash designed a polling mechanism that enabled seamless, real-time transaction validation. The team also decoupled Swvl’s backend payment architecture to support multiple payment gateways, enabling the integration of EBANX for expansion into Brazil and other emerging markets.
2. Introduced Refunds to Original Payment Methods
Tintash developed and deployed a global refund mechanism that returned cancellation refunds to a user’s original payment method rather than an in-app wallet.
The team integrated with payment gateway APIs to support partial and full refunds, providing users with a more transparent refund process and improving customer satisfaction and trust.
3. Gave Partners Control Over Daily Operations
Tintash built a scalable, web-based vendor management portal that allowed Swvl’s partners and operators to manage their daily operations independently.
The portal provided an intuitive user experience designed to drive vendor adoption while reducing reliance on Swvl’s internal teams.
4. Automated Supply Pricing and Driver Payouts
Tintash automated Swvl’s supply-pricing framework to eliminate manual calculations and improve driver payout accuracy. The team introduced a data-driven Rate Card system that centralized pricing parameters and reduced reliance on manual input. It also implemented a cron job-based payout system that processed payments for thousands of captains without manual intervention.
5. Improved Dispatcher Monitoring and ETA Predictions
Tintash designed and released Ratimator, an ML-powered ETA prediction service that improved the accuracy of Swvl’s estimated arrival times. The team optimized dispatcher monitoring and consolidated multiple ETA services into a single API, reducing Google Maps API costs and improving system maintainability. It also introduced automated logging and health monitoring through Datadog to improve system performance and issue tracking.
For context, Cairo alone had over 2500 captains
2500 captains x 7 minutes per captain
= 17,500 man minutes
Payouts happened every week
Each solution delivered by Tintash provided measurable improvements to Swvl’s operations and customer experience:
- Payment Integrations enabled Swvl to transition to cashless transactions in Kenya and enter the Brazilian market with minimal disruptions
- Refund-to-Source Capability improved customer retention and satisfaction by offering a transparent refund process.
- Partners Portal Development empowered vendors to manage their operations independently, reducing operational overhead for Swvl.
- Supply Pricing Automation eliminated thousands of manual work hours, ensuring a 98% accuracy rate in driver payouts.
- Dispatcher & ETA Optimization significantly improved arrival time estimates, reduced reliance on costly third-party services, and enhanced system reliability.
