Every product eventually talks to something else—Stripe, HubSpot, legacy ERPs, partner APIs. The failure mode isn't the first integration; it's the tenth ad-hoc script nobody owns.
Treat integrations as products
Versioned contracts, documented payloads, and owners. A thin integration service beats scattering fetch calls across the monolith.
Retries and idempotency
Networks fail. Use exponential backoff, dead-letter queues, and idempotency keys on payment or order endpoints so retries don't double-charge.
Secrets and rotation
API keys live in Key Vault or similar—never in repo. Plan rotation without downtime; your future self will thank you.
Bottom line
CalmaFinance and TRD both depend on reliable external boundaries. We bring that discipline to client integrations too.