One place for African businesses to get paid, pay others and keep their books straight, across every branch.
Receiving payment gets painful when the transaction takes ages to confirm, especially for foreign payments. Businesses with outlets in different states and countries can't run one accounting system, and keeping balanced records becomes a job of its own.
The objective: one place for a business's financial operations. Send money anywhere, get paid from anywhere, account for every branch in one view, and build better relationships with customers.
01Munachi sells wristwatches from a stall at Obalende Market, Lagos.
02For every returning customer, he pastes his account number into WhatsApp.
03Then his customer waits in the shop for a bank alert that hasn't arrived.
04With Collect, the actions he needs most are one tap away: he makes a payment link.
05He shares it anywhere, and the customer pays whichever way they like.
06The payment is confirmed in the app straight away. No bank alert needed.
Illustrative, drawn for this case study from the research and design described here.
We had a brief, but the PM and the design team ran our own research to test our assumptions, understand users' problems first-hand and connect them to the company's goals.
| Key objective | Paystack | Stripe | Collect (designed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get paid by customers anywhere | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Integrate with commerce platforms | ✓ | ✓ gateway & API | ✓ payment links |
| Billing & financial reporting | – | ✓ | ✓ reconciliation |
| One account across many branches | – | – | ✓ with approval chains |
| Customer management & messaging | – | – | ✓ |
Based on the key objectives and market advantages I noted for each competitor. Stripe also builds loyalty through its blog and content.
Munachi's customers wait in the shop for a bank alert. International transfers are slowest of all.
Munachi pastes his account number into WhatsApp for every order.
Phonehub runs a separate account per branch and reconciles at the end of each period.
Clients without documents ready were dropping off during sign-up.
Both personas struggled to manage customers and keep in touch.
I wrote the user stories with the team, grouped them into three jobs, and used them to shape the sitemap and flows.
Yellow outlines mark structures that came out of iteration: the nav was full, so features got a hub and quick actions got their own button.
Core flow · get paid with a linkRequire every document at sign-up, or let businesses in and verify later.
A quick sign-up for small businesses, large ones and freelancers. Some transaction actions stay locked until documents are in.
It lowers drop-off from businesses without documents to hand, and gives value from day one.
Partly verified accounts, which means the app must make it clear what's locked and why.
Spread actions across sections, or curate the most-used ones into a single quick-action button.
A Collect button that opens the actions research showed businesses most need on the go.
Getting paid is the moment of truth. Nobody should dig through the app to do it.
Curation means choosing what's left out, so the list is driven by research, not opinion.
The navigation was already full, and more business features were on the roadmap.
One section for revenue, customers, invoices, paylinks and POS, with room for what comes next.
It keeps the main navigation calm and gives future features a home without a redesign.
Those features are one tap deeper, which is fine for weekly tasks but not for daily ones.
A branch in Abuja and one in New York both need to pay for services from the same business account.
Any branch can start a transfer. If an approval chain is set, the right people approve before money leaves, and everyone can track its status.
Control without bottlenecks. It replaces the old signatory routine at the bank.
Approvals add time, so chains are optional and set by each business.
Leave relationships to email and WhatsApp, or bring them into the product.
Add customers, put them on services and message them by email and SMS, including birthdays and holidays. Replies land in one thread on the dashboard.
Customers stay longer with businesses that relate to them, and businesses learn how to serve them better.
More scope to build and maintain, justified because relationships came up for both personas.
The solution needed both a mobile app and a web dashboard. They offer similar features, adjusted to what each audience has to work with.
Munachi used to paste his account number into WhatsApp and wait for a bank alert. Here's the flow that replaces that, rebuilt so you can use it.
Each step you complete explains the design decision behind it.
An interactive recreation of the shipped design. Names, amounts and the link are illustrative.
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