Zircon "Njangi" Fintech App — Full Case Study

In many parts of Africa and the African diaspora, saving money to start a business, buy land, purchase a house, or pay tuition fees is extremely difficult when doing it alone. Traditional savings methods lack structure, accountability, and trust — making it hard for individuals to reach their financial goals independently.

Zircon "Njangi" is a fintech mobile app that brings like-minded people together who share the same financial goal. Members contribute funds collectively through a structured group savings system (known as "Njangi" in Cameroon and parts of West Africa), helping each participant achieve their goal faster than they could alone.

The app digitizes and modernizes the traditional Njangi system — adding transparency, scheduling, analytics, and security to a practice that has existed in African communities for generations.

I started by conducting user research through surveys and questionnaires (using Forms.com) to understand the real pain points people face when saving money individually or in informal groups. Key findings included:

Lack of trust in informal savings groups

No visibility into who has contributed and when

Difficulty tracking progress toward financial goals

No structured way to schedule contributions

From the research, I defined the core user needs: a secure, transparent, and easy-to-use platform where users can create or join savings groups, track contributions in real time, and manage their finances in one place.

I built low-fidelity wireframes in FigJam to map out the full user flow and information architecture — from onboarding through to creating a Njangi group and making contributions.

I moved into high-fidelity UI design in Figma, building a clean, modern interface with both light and dark mode support. Every screen was designed with accessibility and clarity in mind.

I created interactive prototypes in Figma to demonstrate the core user flows and validate the design decisions before any development work.

Onboarding screens

Sign in / Sign up

Home screen

Njangi screen (group savings hub)

Create Njangi / Contribute to Njangi

Contributors list

Send and receive money

Schedule payments

Add new recipient

Analytics dashboard

Investment screens

Notification screen

Verification screen

User profile

Add new card / All cards

Subscription screen

Help & support

Fingerprint lock screen

Zircon "Njangi" is currently a concept project and financial solution designed as part of my fintech startup. The app has not launched yet — it remains in the beta/concept stage. The case study demonstrates a complete end-to-end product design process, from user research through to a production-ready design system.

Designing for financial products in the African context requires deep empathy for how people actually manage money in their communities. The traditional Njangi system works because of trust and social accountability — the challenge was translating those human dynamics into a digital experience without losing what makes them work.