FinTech
Web App . PWA
Fiat + Crypto
Xbanka: Designing a Hybrid Fiat + Crypto Financial Platform for the Nigerian Market
A hybrid fiat and crypto PWA for everyday Nigerians. Buy, sell, send, and hold naira and crypto in one place, with a compliance system built around how Nigerians actually use money.
Role
Solo Product Designer + Product Lead
Platform
Web + PWA
Tools
Figma
Timeline
March 2026 - Ongoing
OVERVIEW
The Brief
"Nigerian fintech has fiat. Crypto exchanges have crypto. Nobody has built one product that does both well — compliantly, beautifully, for everyday Nigerians."
XBanka Financial Services came with a clear ambition: a single platform where users could hold naira, trade crypto, send money, and manage their financial identity — all without switching apps. As the sole designer and development lead, I owned everything from product architecture and flow design to UI, design system, and overseeing the engineering build.
Local
Quidax
Local
Patricia
Global
Bitget
Global
Bybit
Opportunity Gap
No social layer in Nigerian fintech
PROCESS
From zero to a full financial platform in under 3 months
WK 1-2
Discovery
Competitor audit — Bitget, Bybit, Quidax. Flow mapping. Product architecture. KYC compliance research.
WK 3-5
Design
Onboarding, KYC tiers, wallet (fiat + crypto), trading (buy/sell/convert), account section, design system.
WK 6-9
Build Oversight
Development handoff, QA flows, integration testing with Paystack, Obiex, and Prembly.
WK 10-12
Testing
Pre-launch QA checklist, edge case testing, PWA optimisation, staging demo.
The three verticals
Restaurants, hotels, and clubs. One unified experience
Each vertical on Bookies has distinct booking logic, distinct listing anatomy, and distinct user expectations. Designing all three to feel like one coherent product — not three different apps stitched together — required a strong shared design system and careful decisions about where each vertical diverges.
01
Restaurant
Browse by cuisine, price range, and location. View restaurant profile with photos, menu, and available reservation slots. Pre-select starter, main, and dessert before arriving. Specify special occasions and seating preferences. Confirm reservation and receive booking ID.
01
Restaurant
Browse by cuisine, price range, and location. View restaurant profile with photos, menu, and available reservation slots. Pre-select starter, main, and dessert before arriving. Specify special occasions and seating preferences. Confirm reservation and receive booking ID.
01
Restaurant
Browse by cuisine, price range, and location. View restaurant profile with photos, menu, and available reservation slots. Pre-select starter, main, and dessert before arriving. Specify special occasions and seating preferences. Confirm reservation and receive booking ID.
CORE CHALLENGE
KYC that feels like a reward, not a roadblock
The hardest problem on XBanka wasn't building the crypto flows — it was designing a compliant identity verification system that didn't kill activation.
Nigerian users are cautious with new financial products. Asking for BVN and ID before showing any value is the fastest way to lose them. The solution was a demand-triggered KYC model — users get access first, and verification unlocks more as they need it.
CHAT · SEND MONEY PANEL
When a user taps send inside a chat, the payment panel overlays the bottom half of the conversation. The thread and the transaction live in the same screen simultaneously.
Tier 0
Email only: Receive fiat and crypto, add funds up to ₦150,000. No friction.
Tier 1
BVN: Triggered when sending fiat or adding funds above ₦150k.
Tier 2
ID + Selfie: Triggered when trading or sending crypto.
Tier 3
Proof of Address: Unlocks higher limits and full account access.
WALLET
One wallet. Two worlds.
The wallet is the emotional centre of XBanka. A single screen holds naira and crypto balances together — total portfolio value at a glance, broken down into fiat and crypto. Users switch between tabs rather than switching apps.
WALLET · CRYPTO TAB
The crypto tab shows holdings across BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC with 24h change indicators, quick actions (Deposit, Send, Convert), and a full transaction history — all in one scroll.
TRADING
30 seconds to lock a rate. Designed to feel instant.
Crypto trading on XBanka is powered by Obiex Finance's RFQ API — the platform locks in a live rate for 30 seconds within which the user confirms their trade. The design challenge was making that constraint feel like confidence, not pressure.
TRADING · RATE LOCK PATTERN
When a rate auto-refreshes, changed amounts highlight briefly with a teal flash. An amber banner appears only when the change is meaningful. The confirm button never disappears — it just asks the user to look before they tap.
SEND FLOWS
Sending money, two ways
XBanka handles both fiat and crypto sends from a single unified modal system. The recipient input uses a toggle — XBanka tag for internal transfers, bank account for external sends. For bank transfers, Paystack resolves the account name inline before the user can proceed — a trust signal that reduces wrong transfers.
SEND CRYPTO · EXTERNAL WALLET
Every external crypto send carries a prominent network warning. Wrong network = lost funds. The design doesn't hide this — it surfaces it at the moment of network selection, not buried in a terms page.
OUTCOME
Built, tested, and ready to launch
Full Platform
34 features across 8 modules — onboarding, KYC, wallet, trading, account, and PWA — all designed and built.
Compliance by Design
A demand-triggered KYC system aligned to CBN tiered KYC framework and SEC VASP regulations.
Developer-Led
As both designer and development lead, design intent translated directly into implementation — no gap between Figma and the live product.
Phased Roadmap
Gift Cards, Bill Payments, and P2P Marketplace are already surfaced in the product as locked "Soon" states — the roadmap is baked into Version 1.
REFLECTION
What Xbanka taught me
XBanka is the most complex product I have designed. The combination of fiat and crypto, Nigerian regulatory constraints, and volatile market conditions meant every design decision had to work on multiple levels simultaneously — user trust, legal compliance, and technical feasibility at once.
The biggest lesson: in fintech, the best UX is invisible compliance. Every KYC gate, every rate warning, every transaction limit exists because a regulator requires it. The design job is to make those requirements feel like product features, not bureaucracy. When a user hits a KYC prompt and thinks "I need to verify to unlock this" rather than "why is this app asking for my BVN", the design has done its job.
Leading the development team alongside the design work also changed how I think about what product design means. Design doesn't end at handoff. It ends when the product works the way it was meant to.
