With just 20 onboarded merchants since first release, the platform had over

760+

85M+

in Transaction value

Transaction count

Successful transaction

28M+

Key learnings

To ensure merchants who are account holders at FirstBankNigeria are equipped with relevant tools that empower their businesses financially and operationally

Key outcome

In respect to the product, I realised studying users behaviour is important but knowing how to create value out of an opportunity is very critical. Hence, the need for consistent observations is essential to the products growth. Also, being involved in this role as a first-year designer provided further context on how best i can communicate with stakeholders effectively. This involved utilising RACI and stakeholder mapping.

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.

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

This involved me;

• directly communicating 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 for the entire project.

My Contributions

Solution exploration

The problem

The main risk attached to this core problem involved the bank losing merchant account holders which takes a larger percentage of transactions value to other industry players

The approach

Journey mapping

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 problem idenitifcaiton, analysis and requirement gathering. This involved all relevant stakeholders including marketing, project managers, product managers, sponsors, business analyst etc. 

This was critical aspect of the product that involved understanding how businesses would be onboarded into the platform. FirstBank being a highly regulated bank required critical documents to be provided. However, these documents seemed like a very thorough tasks which puts users off.

Due to these rigorous process, the team decided to move the validation process into the app, giving the merchants the ability to sign up easily but with restrictions in a "test" mode, experience the capabilities of the platform and can then decide to transition into the "Go-Live" mode which would require the provision of the required documentation.

The Compliance section involved 3 steps which include;

1. Account validation

2. Merchant Information

3. Document upload

Ensuring the legitimacy of businesses onboarded on Firstchekout

Developing easy access to key features merchants utilise often

This served 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, helping users easily locate key action. These actions involve;

• 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 a marketing tool to access more businesses.

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.

Context - Business were executing transactions, but these transactions were just typical transaction and we needed to create a value for merchants by helping understand how their business performed real-time

"Merchants used their FirstBank account for mere transactions and used external platforms to monitor business financial performance"

During the 2020 pandemic, FirstBank Nigeria, like many other institutions, faced larger transactional activities happening within accounts most especially for business. However, these just seemed like regular transactions. This created more room for merchant empowerment. 

Recognizing the reliance of merchants on external payment platforms posed as a major threat to to the bank. Hence, the need of FirstBank Nigeria to embark on developing a comprehensive solution to provide reliable and integrated payment services for merchants. This initiative aimed to address gaps in merchant services, enhance operational efficiency, and drive mutual growth and success.

Highlighting key business metrics that's measures business performance

A prototype was created to help understand how well users would interact with the page... View here

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.

Market research

Requirement Gathering

Information Architecture

Rapid Protoyping

A/B Testing

This was catered for in the dashboard. The main aim here was to help the merchants understand their business performance from a financial and operations perspective.

This included;

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

• payment method utilization

• transaction status

• settlements