Loan & Investment App

What made this hard

Making investing feel as easy as ordering food is the obvious way to grow the product and the fastest way to do harm — friction removed from a risk decision does not remove the risk, it hides it. Every simplification had to be checked against whether it made the money clearer or merely made the screen calmer. That is why a projected return is labelled indicative value at maturity and stated gross of withholding tax at the moment of commitment rather than in a footnote, and why the minimum investment and the wallet balance appear before the button instead of arriving as an error after it. The competing pull was consolidation itself: five products in one app tends to produce either a dashboard too dense to navigate or a friendliness that flattens the difference between borrowing and investing, which are not the same kind of decision at all.

Research & discovery

Research status — Exploratory, product-design-led

Who

People running their financial life across four or five separate apps, using a phone in public rather than at a desk.

Investigated

Where consolidation helps and where it harms — specifically whether simplifying an investment decision makes it clearer or merely calmer.

Learned

Friction removed from a risk decision does not remove the risk, it hides it. Borrowing and investing are not the same kind of decision and should not feel identical.

Changed

Projections are labelled indicative value at maturity and stated gross of withholding tax at the point of commitment, and constraints like the ₦100,000 minimum appear before the button rather than as an error after it.

Still open

Whether people read those labels as estimates rather than promises.

Next test

Test whether users distinguish projected returns from guaranteed returns, and measure comprehension, error rate and successful completion on the equity purchase flow.

Key decisions

1. 01

   Anchored the home screen on one balance rather than five. Everything else — quick actions, savings prompts, pending tasks — arranges itself around that single number, so the first question the app answers is always the one people actually open it to ask.

2. 02

   Designed for use in public. The balance masks by default behind a reveal control, because the realistic context for this app is a phone held on a street or in a queue, not a desk.

3. 03

   Turned empty states into the teaching moment. With no active loan, the screen does not simply report ₦0.00 — it explains what borrowing here is for (daily expenses, personal goals, business growth) before offering a single Request Loan action, so a first-time user learns the product at the point they are considering it.

4. 04

   Surfaced every constraint before commitment, not after it. The ₦100,000 minimum sits under the amount field as you type, and the wallet balance appears beside the payment method, so the two most common causes of a failed transaction are visible before the button is pressed rather than reported as an error afterwards.

5. 05

   Wrote the investment language to be honest rather than flattering. A projected return is labelled indicative value at maturity and stated gross of withholding tax — the interface tells you the number is an estimate and that tax has not yet been taken out, at the exact moment you are deciding how much to commit.

6. 06

   Kept transactions in context using bottom sheets over the instrument's own price chart, so committing money never fully hides the performance data the decision rests on.

7. 07

   Unified five products under one restrained visual system — a warm gold accent on near-black and white — so moving from a loan to an equity purchase to a bill payment feels like one institution rather than four bolted-together apps.

What changed

A super-app that earns the breadth it claims: five financial products sharing one balance, one visual language and one standard of disclosure. Constraints appear before commitment, projections are labelled as projections, and empty states teach rather than stall — so consolidation makes the user's financial picture clearer instead of merely shorter.

Scope & context

• Product scope

  5

  Financial products in one app

  Lending, investing, banking, insurance and bill payments

• Product scope

  ₦100,000

  Minimum investment, surfaced before commitment rather than after

• Product scope

  1

  Balance anchoring the home screen, not five

Evidence

One balance anchors the home screen rather than five. Constraints are surfaced before commitment rather than reported as failures afterwards, projections are labelled as estimates with tax status stated at the point of decision, and empty states explain the product rather than reporting zero. The full presentation is published on Behance.

What I would improve next

I would test whether people actually read indicative value at maturity as an estimate rather than a promise — that phrase is carrying a lot of weight, and its comprehension is testable in minutes. I would also check whether masking the balance by default helps or irritates in daily use, since it trades a small constant cost against a privacy benefit that only matters occasionally.

With more time

I would design the portfolio view properly. The app is good at the moment of purchase and thin afterwards, and holding an investment is where confidence is either built or lost.