Designing an allround payment infrastructure for merchants within WestAfrica

Firstchekout, the payment infrasturture of FirstBank Nigeria houses the payment gateway and other payment services that helps merchants across WestAfrica thrive. The product currently caters for online merchants which represents over 15% of FirstBank's customer base

Company

Fundall Technologies

Platform

Role

Year

Mobile

Product designer

2021

Backstory

Business operations serve as the cornerstone of economic sustainability. With its widespread presence across West Africa, FirstBank Nigeria aims to empower both existing and prospective merchants of the bank by offering convenient, dependable, and accessible payment solutions. The FirstChekout platform resonates with this objective, serving as a vital product for FirstBank Nigeria that helps merchants to seamlessly track their business performance, diversify their payment options, and even establish an online storefront for enhanced market reach and customer engagement. Through FirstChekout, FirstBankNigeria aims to foster a thriving ecosystem for merchants, facilitating their growth and success in the dynamic business landscape.

Design Goal

My role as a Product designer involved creating an interactive interfaces with a seamless experience.

This involved me;

• directly communicating directly with product owners on key requirements and criteria for implementation

• developing systems and communicating with developers to enhance an effective product development

• presenting ideas and prototypes to stakeholders of the project

• create responsive design

The process involved

There was the project team who produces the output and the business team who converts the output to outcomes and benefits. We would typically engage in sessions with the business team to critically understand the following;

• key problems that have been encountered

• how the problem creates opportunities

• competitors and players in the market

• goal for the project

These are usually communicated with a target date of delivery of the entire project.

Exploring the Solution

My Contributions

The goal was to increase active users by atleast 10% month on month

Outcome

At the end of 2023, we had grown our user base from 14,000 to over 85,000 with 62% active users and a transacting value of over 200 million naira

Solution exploration

The problem

During the 2020 pandemic, FirstBank Nigeria, like many other institutions, faced a significant decline in transactional activities among its business clientele as business operations were hindered.

It became apparent that the operational efficiency of merchants greatly influenced the bank's success, as their ability to conduct business seamlessly affected transaction volumes and revenue streams. Recognizing the reliance of merchants on external payment platforms, which introduced complexities and risks, FirstBank Nigeria embarked on developing a comprehensive solution to provide reliable and integrated payment services. This initiative aimed to address gaps in merchant services, enhance operational efficiency, and drive mutual growth and success.

The approach

In this session, we discussed questions that highlighted the major needs for merchants and what other competitors were doing. This helped us leverage opportunities that would help us remain compeitive in the market.

Understanding the issues we had identified, we decided to host a 3-day session in a hotel in Lagos, Nigeria for the sole purpose of requirement gathering. This involved all relevant stakeholders including marketing, project managers, product managers etc. 

This was catered for in the dashboard. The main aim here was to help the user understand how well their business is performing from a financial and operations perspective.

This included;

• an overview of processed transactions. (transaction value and transaction volume)

• payment method utilization

• transaction status

• transaction settlements

Highlighting key business metrics that's measures business performance

Developing easy access to key features merchants utilise often

This page serves as a shortcut to key and relevant aspects of the product. Based on our research, users highlight key features they would utilise often. This drove the essence of the Get started section of the app. This involves;

• product catalogue

• developers tool

• api keys

• payment links

• payment settings

• virtual account

Equipping merchants with capacity to offer several ways of receiving sales income

This product priortises helping merchants provide multiple payment methods their customers can use to make payments. these methods include;

• Cards (payment with bank card)

• BNPL (payment through a credit system)

• USSD (payment through code)

• QR (payment through a code)

• PAY ATTITUDE (pay with phone number)

• Firstmonie wallet (payment through a firstbank wallet)

• Firstbank account (a one-time virtual account generator)
  

Equipping merchants with a store that enables them to sell products

This feature caters for the merchants by aggregating the entire operations of merchant's business into the product.  Here, the merchants are able to sell and manage their products.

Also, the sections serves as an advert tool to access more businesses across West africa.

Merhcant Configuration

This feature was focused on enabling the merchant to set how certain aspects of the platform should work. Here the merchant could configure the following;

• the currency they dealing in

• what payment channel are used to collect sales income

• how settlements are made

• how they receive details about transactions 

APIs and Webhooks

This feature was targeted for creating a means where merchants who don't intend on utilising the firstchekout store can connect our payment channels to their existing website.