Internationalizing a crypto marketplace to 40+ languages.
Paxful was a peer-to-peer crypto marketplace operating globally. Over two years, Danubio built its localization layer - externalization, locale-aware formatting, RTL, and a Crowdin-backed release pipeline - that took the platform to 40+ languages. Once the foundation was in, adding the next language was routine work for Paxful’s translation team.
Already global. Needed to feel native.
Paxful was already global, but the codebase wasn’t. User-facing strings lived in JSX. Plurals were built by concatenating counts with nouns. Currency was formatted by string templates. RTL was partial. Content updates moved through days of manual coordination before they reached users.
Danubio internationalized the product top to bottom - frontend, backend, email templates, support macros - and wired it into a translation workflow the team could run without re-coordinating every release.
Five surfaces. One localization layer.
Paxful’s localization challenge ran across the entire product surface. Product copy, financial formatting, trade instructions, support content, and release workflows all had to stay aligned across web, mobile, email, support, and marketplace flows.
- Web productMarketplace, account, and trading views
UI strings, locale routing, and plural-aware templates in the React front end.
- Mobile appiOS and Android surfaces
Mobile copy tied back to the same translation workflow so app releases did not drift from web.
- EmailTransactional and lifecycle messages
Status updates, security messages, and lifecycle templates localized with market-specific formatting and tone.
- Help & supportKnowledge base and agent workflows
Help content and support macros kept aligned with the product language users saw in-app.
- Trade flowOffers, chat, escrow, payment
In-trade messages and chat-adjacent copy had to stay clear across languages because ambiguity could directly affect whether a user trusted the transaction.
Danubio built the shared layer: ICU message formats, locale-aware formatters, RTL component behavior, and release checks. One change moved through all five surfaces on the same cycle.
- 01Product copyExternalized copy, review context, reusable patterns
- 02Local formatsNumbers, currencies, dates, and time zones
- 03Language behaviorRTL, plural forms, grammar, and script support
- 04Release workflowCrowdin sync, review, QA, and CI checks
One offer. Three locales.
A translation pass swaps words. Localization asks the code to behave differently - to compute plural forms, format numbers, choose words by context, render dates and time zones, reflow text that changes length, and lay out pages by direction. Paxful’s screens had to do all of this on surfaces where a mistake changed what the user thought they agreed to.
en-USReference · LTR
de-DELTR
ar-SARTLFrom product change to localized release in hours.
Danubio built the pipeline: Crowdin integrated into the codebase, source strings synced on every change, translator context attached per key, review gates enforced before release, and fallback rules in CI. Translation updates went from days or weeks to hours.
- Product updateCopy and context captured with the feature
Product changes introduced the copy, formatting needs, and context translators needed before localization work began.
- Localization workspaceCrowdin-backed workflow
Source copy moved into Crowdin with review context, language coverage, contributor roles, and translation memory.
- Review and QANative review, tone, and format checks
Reviewers checked meaning, tone, placeholders, length, grammar, and market-specific details before release.
- Release checksValidated before shipping
Coverage, formatting, and fallback rules were checked before updates moved into the release path.
- Localized productRendered by user locale
The interface applied the right copy, formats, plural behavior, and direction when the user reached the product.
Paxful’s Head of Localization went on record about the operation.
She walked through the operation in a Crowdin interview - how it ran continuously across product, mobile, content, and support, and where the quality checks fit. The interview is an independent record of the foundation the platform ran on.
What Danubio delivered.
- Translation turnaround reduced from days or weeks to hours
- Reached 20 languages by March 2020 - second-highest coverage in the crypto industry after bitcoin.org
- One localization workflow for web, mobile, email, support, and trade flows
- Locale-aware financial formatting inside transaction screens
- RTL, plural, grammar, and script rules built into product behavior
- Crowdin-backed review and QA process for multilingual releases
Collaboration with Danubio and their team was a great experience. Their process, communication, productivity and proactiveness were fantastic and the outcome was top-notch. I can highly recommend them.
Anna runs a 24/7 localization operation at Paxful - 3 project managers, 20+ dedicated translators, releases several times a day.
Frequently asked questions
What did Danubio build for Paxful?
Danubio built the localization layer for Paxful, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplace. That layer covered string externalization, pulling user-facing text out of the code so it could be translated, locale-aware formatting of numbers and dates, right-to-left language support, and a Crowdin-backed release pipeline so new translations could ship continuously. Localizing a live, high-traffic marketplace reaches almost every surface of the product and has to keep working correctly while the platform keeps trading. Danubio built the infrastructure that let Paxful operate in many languages at once and add more over time, on a stack that included Laravel and PHP, React, Go, and both MongoDB and PostgreSQL. The result was a platform that could reach a global, multilingual user base.
How many languages did the platform reach?
With the localization layer Danubio built, Paxful reached more than 40 languages, over roughly two years of work. Getting to 40+ languages is an infrastructure achievement more than a translation one: it required the text in the platform to be fully externalized from the code, formatting to adapt per locale, right-to-left scripts to render correctly, and a translation pipeline, built on Crowdin, that let new languages ship continuously instead of one at a time through manual releases. Once that foundation was in place, adding another language became a routine, repeatable step rather than a project. For a peer-to-peer crypto marketplace serving a global user base, reaching 40+ languages this way is what made the product genuinely usable across very different regions and writing systems.
What does localizing a live marketplace involve?
Localizing a live marketplace involves four main pieces of engineering, all of which Danubio handled for Paxful. First, externalizing strings: pulling user-facing text out of the codebase so it can be translated without code changes. Second, locale-aware formatting: rendering numbers, dates, and currencies the way each region expects. Third, right-to-left support: making the interface work correctly for languages that read right to left, which affects layout across the whole product. Fourth, a translation release pipeline, built on Crowdin, so new and updated translations ship continuously as part of the normal release flow. Doing this on a live peer-to-peer crypto marketplace means all of it has to land without disrupting active trading, which is why localization at this scale is an infrastructure project as much as a content one.
Taking a product to new markets or new platforms?
We build the engineering that lets a product work in new languages and new markets. At Paxful, what we built took the product to 40+ languages.