MongoDB Community Edition to Atlas: A Migration Masterclass With BharatPE

Launched in 2018, BharatPE is a fintech pioneer serving millions of Indian retailers and small businesses across more than 450 cities. The company processes over ₹12,000 crore (about US $1.368 billion) in monthly Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based transactions.

One of BharatPE's most innovative financial solutions is India's first interoperable UPI QR code-a scannable 2D barcode that empowers users to make payments using the UPI system in India-and a zero-MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) payment acceptance service, which enables merchants to accept payments through the same system without any charges.

Behind BharatPE's success is the ability to manage high volumes of data, maintain data security, and scale to accommodate growth and adapt to traffic peaks, all while keeping operational and maintenance burden low. This is all powered by MongoDB Atlas.

Sumit Malik, Head of Database Operations at BharatPE, presented at MongoDB .local Delhi in July 2025, sharing the company's transformational journey from managing a self-hosted version of MongoDB.

From Community Edition to Atlas: Unlocking more scale and reducing complexity

BharatPE's legacy infrastructure relied on a self-hosted version of MongoDB: MongoDB Community Edition. The setup included three sharded clusters, each with three nodes (one primary, two secondary), handling BharatPE's 45 terabytes of data.

However, self-managing this large deployment created several challenges. Data was spread unevenly across clusters, which caused imbalances and scaling complexities. Maintaining the database also proved costly and time-consuming for the team.

BharatPE was also looking to expand its disaster recovery capabilities to remove business continuity and downtime risks.

Finally, operating in a regulated industry with high security standards meant that BharatPE needed to create robust end-to-end security and compliance.

"We needed a database platform that could scale seamlessly, secure our data, and minimize operational burden," said Malik.

After careful consideration and due diligence, it was determined that MongoDB Atlas delivered the ideal solution against BharatPE's requirements.

A carefully planned, 5-step migration approach

Key to BharatPE's successful migration was a methodical approach built around five key phases, central to avoiding downtime and maintaining business continuity throughout the process:

1. Design phase: defining scope and strategy - In the initial phase, the BharatPE team laid the groundwork for the migration by clearly defining its scope, timeline, resources, and dependencies. They analyzed data volume, structure, and compatibility between the source system (self-hosted MongoDB) and the target system (MongoDB Atlas). "We carefully designed a migration strategy that accounted for every possible risk and dependency within our system," said Malik.
2. De-risk phase: assessing and mitigating risks - This phase focused on identifying and addressing potential risks associated with the migration. BharatPE validated application compatibility with MongoDB Atlas and assessed the suitability of its driver versions. Malik shared: "Understanding compatibility challenges early on helped us eliminate surprises during production."
3. Test phase: validating systems in lower environments - Before touching the production environment, BharatPE conducted extensive testing in a development environment that closely emulated its real-world setup. "We created a fully mirrored MongoDB Atlas test environment where we integrated our existing systems and validated application sanity and compatibility," said Malik. Introducing an additional MongoDB server allowed the team to simulate real-world scenarios and ensure readiness.
4. Migration phase: data transition and security - BharatPE used MongoDB's mongosync tool to migrate terabytes of data securely and efficiently. Ensuring data privacy during transit was a top priority, and the team adopted MongoDB's robust encryption functionality to protect sensitive financial information and ensure compliance.
5. Validation phase: confirming data integrity and optimizing performance - Once the data was moved, BharatPE performed rigorous post-migration checks. Automated scripts were developed to validate the integrity of the migrated data, ensuring it matched the original source without discrepancies. Additionally, monitoring systems and real-time alerting were set up to catch and resolve any issues immediately.

This meticulous five-step approach allowed BharatPE to transition to MongoDB Atlas without impacting its production environment, all while ensuring data security, operational continuity, and reliability.

MongoDB Atlas boosts performance by 40%

Since migrating to MongoDB Atlas, BharatPE has realized tangible benefits that have directly impacted its operations and customer experience.

"With MongoDB Atlas, we effectively reduced operational complexity and improved scalability," Malik said. Atlas's auto-scaling capabilities enabled BharatPE to effortlessly handle the volume spikes associated with 500M+ UPI transactions monthly.

Atlas's reliability has improved availability and minimized downtime, critical to BharatPE's 24/7 operations. "The system's auto-failover ensures seamless service continuity, even during node failures," said Malik. Notably, MongoDB's SLA-guaranteed 99.995% uptime delivered improved consistency.

Performance enhancements have been equally transformative with a 40% improvement in query response times thanks to built-in query performance analytics. Observability dashboards and real-time alerts have enabled faster issue resolution.

The migration also addressed BharatPE's security concerns. BharatPE now fully meets fintech security and compliance requirements, enabled by MongoDB's advanced security features such as data encryption, role-based access control, and VPC peering.

Finally, by eliminating the complexities of self-managed infrastructure, the company has freed resources to focus on business growth and customer experience.

"MongoDB handles audit logs with a single click-we no longer need third-party tools or manual setups," said Malik. "The migration has future-proofed our infrastructure while reducing costs and improving reliability."

MongoDB Atlas now underpins the foundations of BharatPE's operations, and ensures merchants can continue transacting seamlessly while enabling BharatPE to expand its offerings across India's growing fintech landscape.