Freelancers waited up to 7 days for international payments and dropped off during a 14-field signup.
Demo case study. The story, team and numbers are placeholders that show how a real case study will read.
(Case study 01) Fintech app
A payout app for freelancers in Nigeria who bill clients abroad. When I joined, a dollar invoice took up to a week to land and lost around 8% on the way. I led design for the app, built the onboarding and payout flows in React Native with the team, and stayed on through two launches.
3 min read · 2026
Placeholder artwork
The 30-second version
For busy readersCut signup to 3 fields, designed instant payouts around one balance, and built both flows myself.
Signup completion went from 31% to 68%, and the average payout now lands in 11 minutes.
- 68%signup completion
- 11 minaverage time to payout (was up to 7 days)
- 12kmonthly active users
Sample numbers
The money arrived late, and the app asked for everything first
Every freelancer we spoke to had the same story: the client paid on Monday, the money showed up on Friday, and nobody could say where it was in between. Most kept two or three apps open to chase a single invoice.
Our own app made it worse at the front door. Signup asked for fourteen fields, including an ID upload, before anyone saw a single screen of the product. Two out of three people gave up halfway.
I designed it, built it and shipped it.
- 01 · design
Ran 18 interviews, mapped the payout journey and designed every screen in the app.
- 02 · build
Built the onboarding and payout flows in React Native, and the shared component library.
- 03 · ship
Set up the funnel tracking, ran the beta with 200 freelancers, and owned the launch checklist.
Team: 1 PM, 3 engineers, 1 compliance lead
Speed mattered less than knowing where the money was
I expected people to ask for faster payouts. They did, but what they described most was anxiety: not knowing whether the money was coming at all.
- Insight 01
Silence felt like loss
Freelancers checked their bank apps up to 9 times a day while a payment was pending.
- Insight 02
Trust came before paperwork
People were happy to verify their ID once they had seen the product work. Not before.
- Insight 03
One balance, not three
Juggling dollar, pound and naira wallets made every decision a currency maths problem.
The calls that shaped the product
Why signup asks for three things
Compliance needed full KYC before anyone could move money, not before they could look around.
Shipped
Name, email and password get you in. A checklist on the home screen unlocks payouts at your own pace.
Why there is one balance
The first version showed a wallet per currency, which turned every payout into a comparison.
Shipped
Everything converts on arrival, with the rate locked and shown. You always know what you have.
The design file and the app are the same thing
I built the onboarding and payout screens myself, straight from the Figma components, so there was no handoff to lose detail in. Spacing, type and motion tokens live in one package used by both.
Drag the slider to compare the final Figma frame with the screen running in production.
FigmaProduction
- Tokens shared between Figma and code
- Every state designed, including errors
- Animations under 250 ms
From first beta to live
→ git log --releases
- v0.1Mar 2026Closed beta with 200 freelancers
- v0.4Apr 2026Three-field signup and checklist
- v1.0Jun 2026Public launch in Nigeria
- v1.3Sep 2026Ghana launch and payout tracking
✓ Live in Nigeria and Ghana, still shipping every two weeks.
People finished signing up, and got paid faster
- 68%signup completion
- 11 minaverage time to payout (was up to 7 days)
- 12kmonthly active users
Sample numbers
Within three months of the redesign, more than twice as many people finished signing up, and support tickets about missing payments fell by half.
What I would do next
The biggest lesson was that the paperwork was never the real problem. The order was. Asking for trust after people had seen the product work changed everything.
Where it's at: Live in Nigeria and Ghana, still shipping every two weeks.
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