AA Pharmacy: From OTP Security to a Full Platform Stabilisation

AA Pharmacy is a healthcare and pharmacy retailer operating an Ecommerce store on Shopify. Sweetmag's relationship with AA Pharmacy began with an OTP provider migration, and has since grown into a full technical audit and platform stabilisation engagement.

Client

AA Pharmacy

Industry

  • Health & Pharmacy

Services

  • Discovery & Consulting
  • Integration Strategy
  • Ecommerce & Web Development
  • System Integrations & Middleware

Highlights

  • Migrated OTP verification from Twilio to Firemobile with stronger security controls: rate limiting, cooldowns, and CAPTCHA
  • Diagnosed and resolved checkout-blocking issues caused by an unverified, unmaintained Shopify theme
  • Rebuilt the site on a Shopify-certified theme for a stable, sustainable long-term foundation
  • Preserved and updated OTP, membership, and Anchanto WMS integrations against Shopify's latest APIs
  • Grew from a single security upgrade into a full technical audit and platform stabilisation engagement

Challenge

AA Pharmacy's original OTP verification system ran on Twilio, and the brand wanted stronger security controls, rate limiting, cooldown periods, and CAPTCHA verification, that Twilio's setup wasn't providing. Later, a more serious issue emerged: customers were unable to complete checkout, threatening AA Pharmacy's ability to actually sell. The root causes traced back to two compounding problems: the site's customisations had gone without routine maintenance, and AA Pharmacy was running on an unverified, non-certified Shopify theme that increasingly conflicted with Shopify's ongoing platform updates. Fixing the checkout issue meant untangling these theme conflicts without breaking AA Pharmacy's existing integrations for OTP verification, membership, and Anchanto's warehouse management system, all of which needed to keep working through the transition.

Goal

Migrate AA Pharmacy's OTP verification from Twilio to Firemobile with stronger security controls, then resolve the checkout-blocking issues by moving to a Shopify-certified theme, ensuring OTP, membership, and Anchanto WMS integrations remained fully functional throughout.

Solution

Sweetmag delivered this in two connected phases: an OTP security upgrade, followed by a full technical audit and platform stabilisation once checkout issues emerged.

OTP Migration: Twilio to Firemobile

Sweetmag migrated AA Pharmacy's OTP verification from Twilio to Firemobile, introducing a 60-second OTP expiry, a 60-second cooldown between requests to prevent spamming, rate limiting capped at 10 requests per hour per device or phone number, and CAPTCHA verification to block bot abuse, all integrated smoothly into Shopify's existing login, registration, and checkout flows without disrupting the user experience.

Technical Audit: Diagnosing the Checkout Issue

When customers began experiencing checkout failures, Sweetmag conducted a comprehensive technical audit covering account registration and OTP behaviour, order fulfilment through the Anchanto OMS integration, and add-to-cart functionality, tracing the root causes to unmaintained customisations and conflicts introduced by AA Pharmacy's unverified Shopify theme.

Moving to a Shopify-Certified Theme

Based on the audit findings, Sweetmag rebuilt AA Pharmacy's approved UI/UX design on a Shopify-certified theme, giving the site a stable, sustainable foundation for all future integrations and customisation, rather than continuing to build on top of a theme that kept conflicting with platform updates.

Preserving Existing Integrations

Throughout the rebuild, Sweetmag ensured AA Pharmacy's existing OTP flow, membership/account registration, and Anchanto WMS integration remained fully functional against Shopify's latest APIs, updating deprecated API endpoints, webhooks, and synchronisation tasks so order sync, inventory updates, and fulfilment continued working without disruption.

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