From DVDs to Global Streaming: How Netflix’s Commerce Architecture Actually Evolved

Netflix didn’t start as a global streaming platform. It began as a US-centric DVD-by-mail business, with a commerce system designed for one country, one currency, and relatively simple payment flows.

As Netflix expanded internationally, those early assumptions began to break.

This talk traces how Netflix’s commerce architecture evolved as the business moved from domestic DVDs to global streaming through a series of pragmatic, incremental changes rather than a clean redesign. Under pressure to support rapid global rollout, teams often prioritized speed and market access over architectural purity, introducing complexity that the system was not originally designed to handle.

We will look at how those choices affected system boundaries, data models, and cross-service workflows, and how ownership and team structure evolved alongside the architecture. The talk covers concrete inflection points such as introducing international payment methods, handling regional regulatory requirements, scaling fraud detection, and gradually decoupling tightly coupled services that had become operational bottlenecks.

Attendees will come away with practical guidance on recognizing when early architectural assumptions are no longer valid, evaluating trade-offs between speed and long-term maintainability, and evolving commerce systems incrementally without stopping the business. The goal is not to present a perfect architecture, but to share patterns and signals that help teams make better decisions as their systems grow in scope, scale, and complexity.