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Fintech · Insurtech

Public Shopify Product Insurance App

A micro-SaaS public Shopify application that can be embedded for insurance of product during shipping for customers

Public Shopify Product Insurance App
Focus
SHOPIFY, SAAS, MVP
Delivered
06 Oct 2023
Location
USA

Outcome

Shipping insurance sold at checkout across thousands of merchants from one extension; premiums and commissions set by non-technical staff without a developer.

The Vision & Challenge

Our partner is an established provider of product protection plans, with a business model built on direct integrations with large e-commerce enterprises. While successful, this high-touch approach left a significant market untapped-the vast ecosystem of small and medium-sized businesses operating on platforms like Shopify.

The core friction was economic. The engineering and account management overhead required for a single direct partnership made it impractical to serve smaller merchants. To grow, the company needed to transition from a service-based integration model to a product-led, self-service model that could scale to thousands of users with minimal operational cost.

Robust Devs was engaged to architect and build the technology that would facilitate this shift. We designed a multi-tenant Shopify application that productized their insurance offering, automating everything from merchant onboarding and configuration to the presentation of offers within the Shopify checkout.

The challenge

  • Integrating with Shopify's restricted checkout environment required a solution that was compliant, reliable, and presented a native user experience.
  • The system had to function as a multi-tenant platform, securely isolating data and configurations for thousands of individual merchants while providing our partner with global administrative control.
  • A flexible and accurate method was needed to calculate insurance premiums and merchant commissions based on a dynamic set of rules, such as product category, price, and merchant-specific agreements.

How we solved it

  • We built a checkout extension using Shopify's official APIs, ensuring the insurance opt-in was injected cleanly into the checkout flow without interfering with the merchant's store or violating platform terms.
  • A secure, multi-tenant backend was developed using Laravel. This architecture provided each merchant with a dedicated, isolated environment, managed through a central administrative portal for our partner.
  • We engineered a rule-based pricing engine that allowed non-technical staff to define and manage complex logic for premiums and commissions through the admin interface, removing the need for developer intervention.
Four levels of containment. The outermost is a single multi-tenant application, replacing the previous model of a bespoke engineering integration per enterprise client. Inside it, the insurer’s own console handles merchant onboarding, commission structures and performance across the whole network. Inside that, each merchant has an isolated environment with its own pricing rules and data that no other tenant can reach. At the centre is that merchant’s checkout, where the insurance opt-in is injected through Shopify’s official checkout extension APIs rather than by modifying their store.

Technologies

What we built it with

Front-end
  • JavaScript
  • ReactJS
  • HTML5
  • CSS3
Back-end
  • PHP
  • Laravel
DevOps
  • Linux
  • Digital Ocean
  • AWS
  • Github CI
Database
  • MySQL
Integrations
  • Shopify
Project screen

Dynamic Pricing Engine

This engine allows the insurance provider to create and manage complex pricing rules without writing code. Administrators can set different rates based on product type, price bands, or specific merchant contracts. This gives them the commercial flexibility to tailor offers for different market segments and manage profitability from a central dashboard.

Merchant Management Portal

The portal is the central control panel for the entire service. It provides our partner with the tools to onboard new Shopify merchants, configure their unique commission structures, and monitor sales performance across their entire network. This system turns a complex B2B2C operation into a manageable, scalable business.

How we built it

Used Shopify's official checkout extension rather than a workaround, and put the pricing rules in the hands of staff. Shopify's checkout is restricted for good reason, and an insurance opt-in that breaks a merchant's flow gets uninstalled. Building on the official checkout extension APIs puts the opt-in in cleanly, compliant with platform terms, and looks native in every store. Behind it, a multi-tenant Laravel backend isolates thousands of merchants under one central portal for the partner, and a rules engine lets non-technical staff set premiums and commissions by category, price and merchant agreement without a developer touching it.

In the client's words

“We could only integrate with big merchants, one at a time. Now any store installs it and our team sets the rates.”

NDA - Signed

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