About the Company
TFS (Travel Food Services) is India's largest provider of airport lounges, hosting millions of passengers across major Indian airports every year. Lounge access is a high-stakes operational product: every transaction must clear in seconds, every card eligibility check must be accurate, and any downtime affects an end traveler standing at the lounge entrance.
For years, TFS had relied on DreamFolks for EDC and gateway services that handled lounge access validation and transaction processing. As the business scaled, TFS chose to bring this critical infrastructure in-house. Razorpay was engaged to build the new Lounge Management System (LMS), and Razorpay partnered with Tequity to deliver it.
The Challenge
The TFS LMS had to replace a deeply entrenched provider, deliver a level of reliability that supported live airport operations, and support a wildly diverse set of access models across banks and card programs:
- Eligibility complexity: Different banks (Axis, Kotak, Yes, IndusInd, Canara, Mastercard, and more) operate different access rules - hash-bucket based, BIN-based, spend-based, voucher-based, primary-card-only, primary-plus-guest, and others.
- Transactional reliability: The system had to process lounge access in seconds, including penny-drop validations, recon, and downstream reporting, with clear handling of failures.
- Operational tooling: TFS administrators needed full CRUD over clients, lounges, devices, card categories, and access configurations - through a single, well-designed admin interface.
- Scale at peak load: Holiday peaks and weekend morning rushes generate sharp transaction spikes that the system had to absorb without degradation.
Solution Implemented by Tequity
Tequity built the LMS end-to-end across design, engineering, and QA. Major capabilities delivered:
Eligibility and Access Engine:
- BIN-level salt configuration
- Velocity check engine (V1)
- Hash-bucket eligibility tied to entitlements
- PAN/Card-hash based lounge access configuration
- Spend-based hash and account number ingestion (Axis spend-based flow)
- Voucher-based access including primary and guest flows
Multi-Bank Data Ingestion:
- IndusInd, Kotak, Yes Bank, Mastercard, MMT data ingestion
- Card upgrade, downgrade, and hotlisting flows
- Add-on card denied checks
Operational Reliability:
- Recon reports with failed-message tracking
- Transaction-without-pennydrop handling
- Memory leak fixes and observability setup in production
- Auto-generated reports for Mastercard
Admin Tooling:
- Single website for Mastercard customers for prebooking lounge access
- Customer care portal
- Admin CRUD interfaces for clients, lounges, devices, and card category modules
- Infinite scrolling and debounced search for high-volume admin lists
SMS and Communication:
- SMS integration across booking and access flows
The platform was rolled into production with comprehensive documentation and continues to be enhanced sprint after sprint, with new card programs, new banks, and new flows added regularly.
Results
The Tequity-built LMS now powers TFS lounges across India:
- 3 Million+ active users per month across the network
- 30 transactions per second peak load handled without degradation
- Live across all TFS airport lounges in India
