A product that works in one country is a product. The same product in twelve countries, each with its own currency, regulator, identity documents, payment rails, tax rules, calendar, language and launch date, is a platform, or it is twelve products pretending to share a codebase. The difference is whether the country-specific parts are configuration and adapters over a shared core, or forks that drift, and the choice is made in the first year whether anyone notices or not.
Ten parts: what a platform is and the economics of a shared core, tenancy and region models with data residency, configuration over code (country configs, flags by geography, rules engines, config as a product with its own release process), localisation and money, regulatory variance through the adapter pattern, the shared core with its extension points and versioning, the rollout and migration of a country from launch to deprecation, and the organisation of platform and country teams across time zones. Two further parts follow: payment rails per country behind one journey, and operating across markets with per-country observability, SLOs and parity.
economicsWhy a shared core pays after the third country and costs before it; the fork that looks cheaper.
tenancy and regionsSingle versus multi-tenant, region ownership, data residency, and what the client must know about where it is.
config over codeCountry configs, flags by geography, rules engines, and config as a product with validation, review and rollout.
localisation and moneyLocales, plurals, calendars, scripts, currencies and exponents, tax, and the formats that differ by country.
regulatory varianceKYC per market, limits, reporting, and adapters that keep the regulator out of the core.
core and adaptersBoundaries, extension points, the versioned core, and what a country may and may not override.
rollout and migrationLaunching a country, migrating one onto the core, deprecating one, with the client half of each.
the organisationPlatform teams, country teams, ownership, on-call across time zones, and the meetings that replace memos.
Paired with Trust and Big-company FEThe Trust course covered money, identity and regulation on one product's screens. The Big-company FE course covered the machinery of a large organisation. This course is where the two meet: one core, many countries, and the configuration, adapters and teams that keep them one product.