[GSoC 2026] Interest in Self-Service API (BFF) – Architecture Discussion

[Harish <ha...@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all doing well.

My name is* Harish*, and I’m a second-year ECE* student from India*. I’ve
been exploring Apache Fineract’s architecture over the past few days and
reviewing the discussion around the proposed Self-Service API (BFF)
component for GSoC 2026. I’m very interested in working on this project.

From my understanding, the goal is to build a standalone
Backend-for-Frontend service that exposes consumer-facing APIs such as
account balances, transaction initiation, and loan applications, while
securely integrating with the Fineract backend.

I’ve been thinking about approaching this as a *dedicated Spring Boot
microservice* that communicates with Fineract via HTTP clients aligned with
existing API patterns. For authentication, I’m considering a
consumer-focused *JWT/OAuth2-based mechanism*, separate from the admin
authentication model.

Since this service would be public-facing, I was also considering whether
it would be appropriate (even at the POC level) to include:

   -

   Asynchronous handling for heavier operations like loan processing
   -

   Redis caching for frequently accessed endpoints
   -

   Basic rate limiting and validation
   -

   Resilience patterns when communicating with Fineract
   -

   Docker-based setup for easier deployment and testing

I would appreciate guidance from the community on the expected scope of the
POC — particularly how production-ready it should be.

I also have a few clarifications:

   1.

   Should consumer users be stored within Fineract’s existing user model,
   or should this BFF maintain a separate identity store linked to Fineract
   clients?
   2.

   Is multi-tenancy expected to be supported in this POC?
   3.

   Would this component live as a new module within the apache/fineract
   repository, or as a separate repository?

I’d be happy to draft a short architecture proposal based on the feedback
here.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Thank You and Regards,

Harish

github: https://github.com/HarishSivakumar-dev

mail: harishss.2k07@gmail.com

Re: [GSoC 2026] Interest in Self-Service API (BFF) – Architecture Discussion

[Aman Mittal <am...@gmail.com>]

Hi Harish ,

Welcome to the community, thanks for reaching out, currently the the
proposal is still in draft mode so many details yet to be finalized. But
make sure that on banking applications if you are doing and transaction
processing. Consistency is the highest priority.
Meanwhile you can setup you local build of fineract.

Regards,
Aman




On Tue, Feb 24, 2026, 3:42 AM Harish <ha...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I hope you're all doing well.
>
> My name is* Harish*, and I’m a second-year ECE* student from India*. I’ve
> been exploring Apache Fineract’s architecture over the past few days and
> reviewing the discussion around the proposed Self-Service API (BFF)
> component for GSoC 2026. I’m very interested in working on this project.
>
> From my understanding, the goal is to build a standalone
> Backend-for-Frontend service that exposes consumer-facing APIs such as
> account balances, transaction initiation, and loan applications, while
> securely integrating with the Fineract backend.
>
> I’ve been thinking about approaching this as a *dedicated Spring Boot
> microservice* that communicates with Fineract via HTTP clients aligned
> with existing API patterns. For authentication, I’m considering a
> consumer-focused *JWT/OAuth2-based mechanism*, separate from the admin
> authentication model.
>
> Since this service would be public-facing, I was also considering whether
> it would be appropriate (even at the POC level) to include:
>
>    -
>
>    Asynchronous handling for heavier operations like loan processing
>    -
>
>    Redis caching for frequently accessed endpoints
>    -
>
>    Basic rate limiting and validation
>    -
>
>    Resilience patterns when communicating with Fineract
>    -
>
>    Docker-based setup for easier deployment and testing
>
> I would appreciate guidance from the community on the expected scope of
> the POC — particularly how production-ready it should be.
>
> I also have a few clarifications:
>
>    1.
>
>    Should consumer users be stored within Fineract’s existing user model,
>    or should this BFF maintain a separate identity store linked to Fineract
>    clients?
>    2.
>
>    Is multi-tenancy expected to be supported in this POC?
>    3.
>
>    Would this component live as a new module within the apache/fineract
>    repository, or as a separate repository?
>
> I’d be happy to draft a short architecture proposal based on the feedback
> here.
>
> Looking forward to your thoughts.
>
> Thank You and Regards,
>
> Harish
>
> github: https://github.com/HarishSivakumar-dev
>
> mail: harishss.2k07@gmail.com
>