Unified Checkout: Streamlining Uber’s Payment Ecosystem

This post details the architecture and implementation of Uber's Unified Checkout platform, a new layer designed to centralize payment logic and orchestrate payment methods, risk assessments, and user authentication flows across various Lines of Business (LOBs). It introduces a modular and hosted version, with a focus on the 'Checkout Actions' framework for executing generic, stateless flows such as 2FA, identity challenges, and payment authorizations. The post highlights the decoupling of payment complexity from LOBs, enabling faster adoption of new payment methods and ensuring feature parity. Key architectural components include microservices for preparing payment profiles, invoking risk systems, generating Checkout Actions, and handling payment confirmation signals from asynchronous third-party processors.