Scan2Cycle

The challenge

Operators had bikes on the street and a way to watch over them. What they did not have was a way to sell a ride from them.

Renting a physical object is not like selling a seat or a subscription. Two riders cannot be promised the same bike, payment does not confirm at checkout, and the bike is usually asleep to save battery.

The goal was a platform any operator could run in their own city, under their own brand, without a technical team of their own.

What we built

Together with the founder, we mapped the full journey from the moment a rider opens the app to the moment the bike is locked again. We then designed and built Scan2Cycle as a multi-tenant platform that allows operators to:

• Offer riders a specific bike, reserved for a specific time
• Confirm a booking only once the payment has actually cleared
• Let riders unlock and lock bikes from their phone
• Show riders the real status of a bike before they walk to it
• Manage their own fleet, pricing, and locations
• Run under their own brand and their own address
• Add staff with the right level of access
• Serve riders in more than one language

The platform was built on PostgreSQL with a modular architecture, so new payment methods, lock hardware, and markets can be added without rebuilding the core.

The result

Scan2Cycle turned a fleet monitoring tool into a product that earns money, without the founder having to hire an engineering team to get there.

The rules of the business are enforced by the platform itself rather than trusted to the code around it. Two people cannot be sold the same bike, and nobody is charged for a ride they never received.

It also created the foundation for growth into more operators, more cities, additional languages, and new lock hardware as the fleet changes.