FAKEBUSTERS
Long-term product, technology and engineering leadership—from the first release to the Mercari integration.
Project facts
Starting with quick authentication, we helped FAKEBUSTERS build a cross-border product and engineering team.
Collective 353 served as CTO throughout the engagement, planning the product with the founding team and leading its architecture and engineering. The service grew from image-based checks into physical submissions, an iOS app, AI-assisted authentication and enterprise APIs.
Engagement outcomes
- 1 → 9
- Engineering team
- Mercari
- Live Anshin Authentication integration
- iOS
- First-party app delivery
- 3
- Cross-border payment integrations
Customers saw a website. Operations ran a complete service.
The public site explained the service and accepted authentication requests. Accounts, payments, case progress, notifications and certificate lookup all used the same underlying data.
Visit the public website ↗
The MVP proved market demand within months of launch
The first MVP focused on image upload, case creation and quick authentication. Within months, real usage and paid demand validated the market. The team then added physical submissions and connected ordering, payment, shipping, intake, authentication, results, certificates and returns into one complete flow.
Project core
Website, payments, app and APIs shared the same case data.
One consistent case state
From submission and payment to the final result, the website, app, operations console and enterprise APIs read the same data instead of maintaining separate versions.
High-availability infrastructure
The Laravel core used multiple cloud providers, load balancing and image failover. Authentication work could continue through a single-service failure, with more reliable image delivery overseas.
AI authentication integration
AI-assisted authentication followed the existing case flow. Image upload, assessment and follow-up all retained the data and status history required by operations.
Product evolution
Each new service reused the existing data and workflow.
From quick authentication to enterprise APIs, account, case and permission data continued to accumulate without rebuilding the system for every feature.- 01MVP launch and market validation
- 02Physical submissions and certificates
- 03Payment integration
- 04Availability and image failover
- 05iOS app and AI workflow
- 06Mercari enterprise API
The Mercari integration brought authentication into an enterprise workflow
The official FAKEBUSTERS API enabled direct exchange of cases and results with enterprise partners. The Mercari Anshin Authentication integration covered live data, security compliance, testing and formal delivery processes: Mercari accepted the order, FAKEBUSTERS performed the authentication, and the result returned through the integration.
Responsibility
Collective 353 served as CTO and built the engineering team.
Weekly meetings with the CEO and CFO set product, operational and technical priorities. Over the engagement, the engineering team grew from one person to nine across backend, frontend, DevOps, QA and iOS.- CTO
- 3 Backend
- 2 Frontend
- DevOps
- QA
- iOS
Next case
CTBC Finance →