Key Goals Addressed

Integrating the application with numerous banks and liquidity providers.
Providing users with quick, easy and ubiquitous access to foreign currency transfers.
Making secure and seamless international payments online.

Primary Users

Businesses seeking FX liquidity whilst remitting money to their partners/ vendors in foreign currency.

Problem Brief

When sending money across continents there are numerous factors to consider. From exchange controls in domestic and foreign countries to constantly varying exchange rates. These challenges are further accentuated for businesses in frontier markets owing to foreign exchange illiquidity, limited access to competitive rates and an inability to move funds quickly and securely. Operational bottlenecks such as compliance challenges in developing countries and slow internet speeds in developing countries were also challenges the Locusnine team had to consider.

Our Contribution

Ideate

Value Proposition Design

Technology Assessment

Design

Market Analysis, Interviews

Competitor Study, Scenarios, User Journey

Product Features, High Fidelity, Beta Testing

Engineer

Secure, Automated Deployments,

Scalable Infrastructure, Plug ‘n Play with different API providers

Promote

SEO

Grow

Usage Analytics

Solution

As exchange rates are varying constantly we built out a feature that allows users to either exchange their money now or in the future.

  • The Exchange Now feature allowed users to essentially ‘lock in’ the current exchange rate and hold it for 24 hours.
  • Users can also bring their own rate to the marketplace under the ‘Exchange Later’ feature and go forward with the transaction and quoted rate later on.
  • For both of these cases, VertoFX doesn’t levy a transaction fee.

Using the currency exchange marketplace, users do not have to worry about illiquidity.

  • This feature allows users to directly deal with other clients on the marketplace.
  • Complete transparency through mentioning expiry dates, live rates and current offers ensured every transaction was secure.
  • Users are greatly benefited as the exchange of funds only happens with the highest bidders in the marketplace.

With limited access to competitive rates, a key aspect of the solutions was to improve FX rates discovery.

  • The currency basket serves as an access point for dozens of currencies.
  • Users have the ability to exchange listed currencies in this basket without them having to visit a bank that has higher fees and slower access & transaction times.
  • Users also have the ability to have a wallet for each currency on the platform allowing for seamless transfers.

Utilising wallets allows users to accomplish key transactions without having to wait for any time.

  • Wallet provides clients access to transactions near real time without having to wait for funds to reach escrow accounts.
  • The wallet also serves as a point of access for receiving home/ foreign currency payments.
  • A minimalistic and simple 3 step process without distractions allows users to focus on the task at hand.

An administrator dashboard provides a god's eye view of all the activity within the application.

  • The manage feature Transact automates payments within a single click.
  • Audit allows admins to keep a track of all actions on the application. This feature also houses a traceable feature which allows payments to be traced to their source origin.
  • Plugged enables integrations with banks, payments and providers for simplified scaling of the application.

Outcomes

23X

Increase in Value of Transactions

2X

Increase in User Registrations

2.6X

Increase in Orders Placed

Approach

Brainstorming

We collated, structured and perused various inputs we gathered from our needfinding sessions with founders, end users and middlemen to understand the breadth and depth of the project.

Develop

We followed an agile approach where we quickly built out a product that accomplished users goals and covered the requirements as per the stakeholders.

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Once the product was built out we started beta testing on it to collect pain points and understand crucial touch points along the user journey which hindered users from accomplishing their tasks.

Scale

After numerous iterations of the product, it was connected with more api providers to enable a greater and wider reach in more countries.

Tech Stack

What does our customer have to say

Being a startup, we have needed to move fast and rapidly evolve - the locusnine team has been with us all the way. They truly understand what a scaling startup needs and have always felt like partners in the product development process because they take ownership and deliver.

Anthony Oduwole, Co-founder - VertoFX Inc

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