Role: Founding Product Designer Client: Swifia Industry: Fintech Scope: Responsive marketing website and web app Year: 2023

Swifia is a remittance and international payment platform built for businesses, specifically Nigerian businesses that import goods from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and China, to pay international suppliers quickly, securely, and transparently. A business pays in naira, Swifia converts it to the supplier's currency, and the supplier receives payment and ships the goods.

Local businesses doing importation typically relied on third-party middlemen to move money internationally. The process was stressful and full of back-and-forth, a business would send money to a contact abroad, wait for confirmation, and hope the funds were received and processed, sometimes over several days, with no guarantee. Worse, some of these middlemen turned out to be untrustworthy, disappearing with the money entirely. For businesses that need to move quickly, this created real risk of financial loss, with importers often having no recourse once money left their hands.

The goal was to make cross-border payments swift, seamless, and safe for businesses, cutting out the uncertainty and risk of relying on middlemen. As the Founding Product Designer for the web app, I focused heavily on trust and simplicity, since local business owners were used to transacting informally on WhatsApp rather than through formal financial software.

Since most local businesses were already comfortable transacting on WhatsApp sending proof of payment, waiting for confirmation, getting account details, I designed the platform to mirror that same simple flow rather than introducing an unfamiliar, formal banking-style process. A business submits their payment receipt, gets an account number issued, makes the payment, and confirms it, keeping the flow close to what they already knew and trusted.

The platform supports payments across multiple currencies, including United States dollars, British pounds, Indian rupees, Chinese yuan, and Nigerian naira. A business enters the amount they want to send in naira, selects the currency they want to convert to, and immediately sees the equivalent amount the recipient will receive before completing payment. This meant designing the flow so currency conversion felt transparent and predictable, letting businesses know exactly what the other side will receive before they commit.

KYC verification without adding friction Every business completes a verification process before transacting, submitting personal details such as name, phone number, email, residential address, and postal code, alongside business details including a valid form of identification, an ID number, and a utility bill no older than three months. The challenge was building this into onboarding in a way that felt like a necessary trust step rather than a bureaucratic wall, so businesses felt secure transacting on the platform rather than discouraged from starting.

Single and bulk transfers for different business needs Businesses can send money two ways: a single transfer for one payment at a time, or a bulk transfer for sending multiple payments in one go, for example, paying one supplier in Chinese yuan and another in United States dollars within the same session.

For bulk transfers, businesses upload a CSV file containing each beneficiary's details, including the recipient's name, company name, account number, bank identifier, branch code, and the amount owed to that person.

Since correctly formatting this file was critical to the platform pulling the right data, I created a video walkthrough showing businesses exactly how to structure their CSV, reducing errors and support back-and-forth. Once uploaded, the platform reads the file and issues a single unique account number for the business to pay into, covering all the individual payments at once.

Usability testing with businesses showed that 85 percent of testers found the payment flow easy to complete without confusion or hesitation. The web app was then developed and launched, giving Nigerian importers a faster, verified alternative to relying on middlemen for cross-border payments.

I learned that meeting users where they already are works better than trying to teach them something new. Because we translated the WhatsApp-style experience users were already comfortable with into Swifia, it lowered the barrier to entry and made it easier for us to convince businesses to use the product.