Scope:
As IC lead on the Rails product, I took full ownership of identifying the issues as the marketplace scaled, like order cancellations, a decline in transaction volume, working with cross-functional teams, and securing stakeholder buy-in to the final delivery of a more robust, platform-agnostic, automated rail. I spearheaded the integration of our payment widget into the Coinbase wallet to increase revenue channels.
Impact:
Reduced payment cancellations by 65%
Increase in transaction success rate to 95%, translating to higher revenue;
Improved average transaction time from 15 minutes to less than 1 minute.
Onboard launched a cross-border payment infrastructure that allowed users to trade assets, but the marketplace model struggled as it scaled
The model relied on manual confirmation between trading counterparties, which lead an increasing rate of cancellations, delayed transactions, and poor user trust in the system. My goal was to redesign the experience from the ground up by simplifying transaction flows, increasing transparency, and improving reliability for all participants while respecting regulatory complexity
Current model: The current marketplace model requires the other party to be available to confirm payments, and it does not provide visibility on payment status during trades
Research:
I took a 30-minute shift on Intercom for a week to interface with irate users. I also led a series of stakeholder interviews and user research sessions with users, merchants, and liquidity providers to understand shared challenges around late payments, confusion, and difficulty confirming payment status.
I also conducted journey mapping workshops with product and engineering teams to visualise the existing process from user and system perspectives. This helped identify where communication was breaking down and where user needs were underserved.
Research: Myself and the PM held interviews with customers and merchants to document frustrations with the current marketplace model
Discovery: Manual confirmation leading to increase in cancellation by customers
Some key problems I noted:
Trade agreements between buyers and sellers were often ambiguous, leading to failed transactions.
There was no standardised flow for how users communicated payment confirmations, which led to delays, errors, and frustration on both sides.
It wasn’t always clear where a payment was, leading to uncertainty and manual intervention.
Misaligned expectations and incomplete payments caused transactions to be cancelled or disputed, eating into operational efficiency and user trust
Opportunity
There was a clear need to introduce structured, reliable transaction flows that could enforce trade agreements, provide real-time transparency, and introduce automated matching, without sacrificing flexibility or compliance.
Brainstorm sessions: Framing solutions for design ideation
After the team had aligned and voted on a set of solutions to explore based on time, effort and business impact, I mapped out user flows to emphasise the improved journey of the user with a faster payment confirmation flow
Grounded in the insights from research, my approach focused on redesigning the transaction experience to solve these key critical challenges:
Introduce Transaction State Visibility
Provide real-time status updates and clear, structured steps for each phase of the transaction lifecycle, reducing uncertainty for customers
Reduce Manual Confirmation and Disputes
Automate key touchpoints like payment confirmation allowing the system to handle buyer-seller matching without manual intervention.
Ideation & Wireframes
I ideated a wireframe that eliminated the extra steps of users filtering through paying merchants when they needed to pay, and instead presented a review module after the automated matching.
Picking the right solution
I prioritised solutions with an impact vs. effort matrix, while considering key trade-offs like simplicity vs. regulatory compliance.
One key learning was balancing the trade-off between user experience and compliance, which came from working with legal stakeholders to weigh in early on, to reduce friction down the line
I designed a real-time payout status tracker
I designed automated AML/KYC pre-validation + FX rate locks
Final exploration: InstantPay feature that abstracts the marketplace and auto matches trades
The approach here was to break down the barrier early: The best way to convince them to try something is to address those questions as they come to mind, like we did on the escrow flow [left]
Prototype: with automated matching, users skip manual trade terms which causes delays
Iteration of accessible support during transaction monitoring
Ideation & Wireframes
Most users access Onboard through mobile devices, while most merchants access it through a desktop. I ensured the designs scale responsively for both mobile and desktop
Desktop: paying through a web app, where the payment infra is integrated to facilitate money movement
Usability tests
I drafted a usability testing interview document with the brief. I conducted user tests with a few customers to understand how they interacted with these designs and to validate the effectiveness of automated payment, comprehension of funds in escrow and transaction monitoring. A few key observations:
From the customers' and merchants' feedback the update proved to alleviate the frustrations of manual confirmations, improve comprehension of payment status in escrow and reduce confusion in transaction monitoring for customers, leading to fewer cancellations
Growth & Scaling
As part of Onboard’s global growth plans, I spearheaded the design of our payment widget on Coinbase to increase revenue channels by enabling asset purchase for users in 20 markets
Outcomes
Refining payout-status messaging and reducing user confusion led to an 87% usability score
We improved payout time from 15 minutes to under 60 seconds
We reduced cancellations by 65% as we took an audit 2 weeks after launch: this had an impact on revenue, merchant trust, and daily active usage
Ugo Ifezue
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