FairMoney needed to give users more flexibility for international card payments while working within regulatory, operational and technical constraints. Nigerian users were limited to $20 a month in international spending on naira cards, after banks cut their limits in early 2022 as dollars ran short. If we didn't act, we predicted up to 15% of international-transaction users might stop using FairMoney naira cards, and international transaction revenue could fall by up to 10%.

As Senior Product Designer for Cards & Payments, and the only designer on this two-month project, I led the design of a naira virtual card wallet with a $500 monthly limit. FairMoney has over 5 million users, and its cards and payments processed about $5 million a month. I combined user research (seven interviews and a 40-person survey) with stakeholder working sessions across Product, Engineering, Compliance and Finance. Together we mapped the constraints and trade-offs around card creation, funding, limits and account behaviour before agreeing the MVP direction, delivered in partnership with Providus Bank as the licensed FX partner.

Regulation shaped the details. Licensed banks could be fined for displaying or dealing in forex, so we showed the $500 limit as its naira equivalent and used Providus Bank's rate. The experience covered card creation and customisation, funding with visible limits, card controls, transaction history, limit requests and key failure states, including network errors and limits shifting with exchange-rate volatility. In moderated usability testing with seven users, six found it intuitive, and all seven trusted its security.

After the first month: average transaction value rose 18%, meeting the target. Card revenue was about $28,000 in the first month, and the app store rating rose from 3.5 to 4.5.

Across my time at FairMoney, I also improved onboarding completion by 75% through research, Mixpanel analysis and A/B testing, increased key transactional click-through by 150%, and led one designer on Savings.