Technology

PlastiCard Mobile App Modernisation

React Native upgrade and UI redesign for iOS 26 compatibility

Mobile App Development React Native Upgrade UI/UX Redesign

iOS 26

Compatible

100%

Feature Parity

Modern

UI Redesign

01 Before we got involved

The Challenge

PlastiCard manufactures and delivers custom ID cards for schools, gyms, workplaces, and event organisers across New Zealand, and their mobile app is the primary channel customers use to capture ID photos and submit card orders.

The existing app was stuck on React Native 0. 64 with deprecated native modules, and Apple had flagged it as incompatible with upcoming iOS 26 APIs, putting them weeks away from being pulled from the App Store.

The codebase had so many outdated dependencies and unmaintained bridging modules that an incremental upgrade was not viable, it needed a full rebuild. Worse, every existing feature had to behave identically because thousands of active customers rely on the app daily and any change to the photo capture or ordering flow would generate support chaos.

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02 What we did about it

Our Solution

We rebuilt the app from scratch on the latest React Native version with a modernised native stack, new camera and image-processing libraries, and a refreshed TypeScript codebase that is sustainable for the next several years.

The photo capture flow was rewritten to use the new native camera APIs with improved cropping, lighting detection, and background removal, while the order management screens were redesigned for clarity without changing the underlying steps customers already knew. We implemented secure token-based authentication, integrated with their existing order backend via REST, and ran the new app against the old one in parallel during testing to guarantee feature parity.

The rollout was seamless, customers experienced zero downtime, and the app is now fully iOS 26 compatible with a modern UI and a codebase ready for future features.

How We Work