2022
Product Designer
Fintech
Escrow Service
ABOUT
Providing secure local & international transactions via escrow.
SafePay is a digital escrow platform that offers you payment protection when you buy a product or service and also gives you transaction protection when you sell to other parties.
Discovering a Problem
With more connectivity happening across the globe, so is trade occurring between humans in similar or different locations. As a result of this, parties who have no physical interaction are transacting, procuring products, and providing services that require payment (money) changing hands.
Non-physical interaction requires trust which has been eroded by issues such as fraud, buyer and merchant scamming, inflexible transactions, delayed payment timeline, cross-border transaction issues, etc.
It’s either you’ve been faced with one of the issues highlighted, or you know someone who has been.
Product Overview
SafePay wants to be an intermediary between transacting parties (buyers and sellers) to ensure both parties provide or deliver products and services for a price within set agreements governing the transaction.
In the case of "procuring a laptop" by a gadget retailer (buyer) from a gadget wholesaler (seller), SafePay will safeguard funds sent by the buyer until the goods are received; while the seller can confidently deliver the products without fear of no-payment or been defrauded by the buyer.
We put the buyers and sellers in control; while building trust in digital global transactions.
Centring the Business
As a startup, the business wants to launch its products and services to capture the target market segment in its locale (Nigeria) and internationally (Africa and Europe). The business defined its goals to:
The outlined business outcomes for designing the product are:
PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE
To understand the context around the problem we are trying to solve, focus was directed to getting to know who needs the solution, why, and how to create a better experience in comparison to the current solutions for them.
What the Users Want
We created a public survey to ask people about their experience with physical and online transactions and how they protect their transactions. Our main intent was to understand the issues they face, the solutions currently adopt, and possibly how they want the solution to be better designed. We further interviewed 4 participants to gain deeper insight.
Why do they need escrow service?
Distilling the data from the user research, we pinpointed the overarching need as "the availability of a third party to reduce transactional risk”. The data also enabled us to identify the following insights on what potential users want:
What Competitors are Offering
We went further to understand the business landscape by looking into other competitive products mentioned in the survey and interview conducted. Some of the existing escrow providers analyzed are:- Escrow.com, Vesicash, Trustapp, and Vahlid.
From trying out their website and apps firsthand, we noted that their solutions target either individuals, businesses, or both. However, variation exists in the type of protection provided, level of service, and pricing depending on the segment of users they are catering to - local, regional, or international.
Other insights are:
These gaps give Safepay the opportunity to design its product with a simple onboarding, faster transaction processing time, and a time-saving dispute resolution process.
Defining Our Market and Users
From the product terrain understanding, SafePay's target market and users were mapped out:
Market
Social-Commerce Sector (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tik-Tok)
Non-payment integrated Marketplace (Jiji. ng)
Small Scale Businesses
Freelancers
Individual-to-Individual based transaction.
Users
Business Owners
Individuals
Freelancers
Product Suppliers.
IDEATION & ITERATION
"How might we reduce the transactional risk for users with Safepay, leverage seamless user experience, and utilize it as an opportunity to increase trust in digital transactions".
Design Strategy
While keeping the business goal and users in mind, strategies to guide the designing process were created.
Solution Exploration & Trade-offs
01. Mobile App First
According to the latest data by GWI, nearly 6 in 10 internet users aged 16 to 64 buy something online every week and more people now make purchases via mobile devices than via desktop and laptop computers.
With mobile devices and apps being a fixture of everyday life for millions of people, we opted for creating a mobile-app first over creating a website for SafePay.
02. Inclusion of Wallet
The availability of wallets for users was explored as a feature. The role of the wallet will be to show the amount users hold in their SafePay account.
This solution was taken off as SafePay wants to limit itself to being a secured 3rd party and relinquishing all payment transfers and transactions to its payment partners.
Users can keep their facilitated payment amount at the end of their transaction in their account with SafePay's payment partners. Funds that will be held with SafePay will be payments for ongoing or disputed transactions.
03. Transaction Creation "Form or Button" on Home Screen
A core action by potential users on SafePay is "transaction creation", hence, it was important to explore how to make the process easy and seamless. The ideated options were either to "integrate a form" on the homepage or "a button". The form was adopted first, however, when the first usability test was conducted, users wanted a button. A button to create a transaction was incorporated at iteration.
User Flow
For users, we considered what their transaction creation process will be to successfully make payments to other users with Safepay. Here is the flow of our persona Tayo (Buyer) using Safepay for a transaction with Arami Essential (Seller).
Note: This flow portrays the Buyer as the primary person for the transaction while the Seller is a secondary agent. It process remain the same when the primary & secondary role switches between buyers & sellers.
Flow Visualization
To explore and visualize the user flow above, sketches and wireframes (as shown in the image below, flows 1-5) were created. This process revealed that the initial "home screen" sketch looks more like a banking app interface than an Escrow payment interface.
After several iterations, the home screen moved from images 1-3, to a final choice between 4 & 5.
Design Improvement: Reworking the Interface
The iterated wireframes were turned into a high-fidelity design and on completion, we conducted a usability test with 3 users. Using feedback from the process, the improvements below were made to the home interface.
PRODUCT SHOWCASE
Optimized Interface
We prioritized users being able to perform core actions and get analytics from the dashboard and home screen - create transactions, transactions information (pending and history, and weekly analytics.
Creating Transaction
To reduce transactional risk, users can secure their transaction via SafePay in 2 steps by providing their details and that of the other parties. Both parties will be notified of the transaction.
As a 3rd party intermediary with no-direct payment functionality, we integrated payment options for users leveraging existing payment platforms/partners they currently use and also trust.
Building Trust
One of the product's goals is to "build trust in digital transaction", hence, we factored this into our design by integrating the "share option". The first party in the transaction can send a transaction link to the second party in order to ascertain the transaction has been made. Link can be shared to platforms like Whatsapp, Email, Twitter, or sent directly.
This gives both parties access to track the transaction.
To be able to track the transaction, both parties must be registered users of SafePay. Transactions progress are in 4 stages - Pending, Payment, In progress, and Completed.
Tracking Transaction
Users can track all, ongoing, and completed transactions
RETROSPECTION
The past and looking forward...
Challenges
A number of challenges were encountered with solutions created to resolve them:
01. User Research
Using escrow payment is not a widely accepted service in Nigeria, hence finding people to share their experience with using such a service was difficult.
02. Interface Design
At the wireframe stage, the initial home screen exploration was similar to a mobile banking app. We solved this by adopting of a dashboard model rather than a home page. Using this method helps make the home screen a summary overview of all other parts of the app.
Future
Here are the future plans for the product:
More Usability Test & Refinement
Test out the final design with the same users at the first iteration stage or another user and employ the insight from the test for further iteration.
Business Dashboard Design
Create a dashboard design for the Business. This will aid the management of the business function internally from Safepay's end (it's already in the works).
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