Platformization of New Dada Financial Account System: From Fragmented Services to a Unified Platform

Introduction: The article revisits the evolution of New Dada's financial account system, describing its transition from a simple account function for couriers to a comprehensive, platformized service supporting multiple business entities.

Definition of platformization: It abstracts scattered demands into a standardized input‑output service, exemplified by Dada's delivery platform that provides logistics as a service.

Reasons for platformizing the account system: Growing business needs such as merchant payments, automated payouts, billing and reconciliation led to a tangled architecture with many ad‑hoc features.

Challenges identified by the team: constant business‑driven feature requests, low reuse, unclear product scope, insufficient sense of achievement, and inefficient manual processes.

Solution – New Dada Account Platform: The team redefined its service objects to serve all business entities, introduced a standardized platform → account → sub‑account hierarchy (illustrated in the diagrams), and offered unified APIs for opening, closing, querying accounts and transferring funds.

Flexible account service: Inspired by bank accounts, the platform allows any compliant entity to open an account with minimal information, and provides uniform interfaces for account management and fund transfers.

Self‑service management tools: A set of tools enables business units to register, configure settlement rules, payment channels, account categories, read integration docs, and debug in a self‑service mode, along with query, reporting, and ticketing functionalities.

Conclusion: Platformization should be considered when a project reaches sufficient scale and complexity; premature platformization can cause over‑design. The New Dada account team aims to become a focused, professional platform delivering convenient and reliable financial services.

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