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Led the design efforts for the mobile app & website, working closely with a with a fellow designer, the founder, and the engineering team.
20 weeks
Year: Apr 2022
Industry: financial services
Product strategy, mobile app, web app, website design
Sometime in 2022, my client reached out to me about moolah, the idea behind it and what problems he was trying to solve. It stemmed from a personal difficulty he faced with keeping track of the loans he’d given out to friends and family, and how getting repaid has caused him issues in the past.
My client identified the need for a platform that bridged the gap between lenders and borrowers. he envisioned a digital ecosystem that would eliminate unnecessary intermediaries and reduce the complexity of traditional lending.
The core Objective of moolah is to make personal lending less stressful. We're aiming to ease the stress of lending/borrowing between two people who know each other, so as not to mar or dent the relationship .
Moolah's development process evolved in stages. It all began with identifying the problem and conducting research. The initial focus was on creating a p2p mobile app for lending money to friends and family. However, as we tested this solution, we discovered a demand from professional lenders who relied on personal connections for lending. So we expanded our solution to include a web app for these business lenders, ultimately addressing the needs of both personas (personal and business lenders).
We built an end - end web and mobile app that offers a seamless way for friends, families and colleagues to Document, Track and get reminded of loan status and repayment due dates.
This solution consists of a mobile app, real time-tracking analytics web app for loan businesses and a simple marketing website.
Impact takes time, but so far we've conducted usability tests with a small group of beta users to gather feedback. Although still being tested, has over 180+ downloads.
The app targets individuals, students, professionals, traders, friends, and family members who have valid bank accounts and active debit/credit cards.
How it works? What sets it apart? Moolah allows users to request informal loans from friends, family, and colleagues, and enables them to set up an agreeable repayment plan. The app verifies and connects user profiles to credit or debit cards , streamlining the disbursement and repayment of loans. Moolah differentiates itself by addressing the scalability challenge for business lenders and by offering data tracking and analytics capabilities.
Loan requests are sent to friends within your network.
Moolah is not a digital wallet but integrates with available payment gateways.
Users can add their cards for loan transactions.
Users can use USSD and bank accounts for transactions.
Debtors authorize direct debits for installment loans when approved.
Anybody who's helped a friend financially once or twice knows how difficult it is to get repaid, and how it has marred relationships.
We believe the traditional way of requesting, disbursing, & repaying informal loans faces challenges like:
We conducted an extensive market research to understand the dynamics of the P2P lending market, had 1-1 conversations with people who lend personally, analyzed competitors, identified market gaps, and gained insights into user expectations for moolah: in the process, we identified with two personas:
After carefully analysing competitors like: Lendsqr, money lending wizard, usepigeon, credi, solofunds, Zirtue, etc
I broke the prioritised features down into user stories and created user flows for better clarity and communication within the team.
I designed the wireframes, focusing solely on the navigation, ease of use, while highlighting all structural elements.
After which I moved to hi-fi to beautify the wireframes for visual appeal.
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The first iteration for the onboarding was a bit long as we initially planned to keep the verification during onboarding for
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Being an MVP, we kept it simple right from the home page, only showing users what they need: Debt and credit, account information, active loan requests, available loan offers, transaction history, notifications, user support, etc
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Loans have a dedicated tab where users can conveniently access and oversee all loan-related activities, encompassing loan requests, pending loans, completed loans, and detailed loan information. This simplifies the management and monitoring of personal loans.
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For a personal loan to be documented and tracked, a loan request has to be created and sent to a recipient through the app. The create a loan request was simplified to either be "One-time repayment loan" or "Installment repayment loan"
The loan request flow is in broken down into two steps: Choose friend/family from network, enter amount, define Loan Purpose, Set loan interest(if any), payback mode,set ue date PINfim (This important to sure s
On Moolah, you can only lend or borrow from people you know, and we've made it easy for users to add these trusted individuals to their "loan network." This not only promotes trust but also encourages a "word-of-mouth" effect. By inviting their friends and family, users can naturally introduce new people to the platform, reducing the need for extensive marketing efforts and enabling growth through referrals.
Allows users to view and edit their personal information, complete verification as required by regulations, monitor their account balance, adjust security and notification settings, update account information, contact support, view verification status, track profile completeness, and log out when needed. Follows the natural expection of profile pages and what people are used to
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For Internal test and clearer communications/presentation to team, I created a clickable prototype to show the interactions, navigation, interface, experience and entire decision making within the app. View Prototype preview 👇
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We're still alpha testing the iOS, and beta testing android and web app. While we solved the problem for 55% satisfactorily, 45% gave some new insights we'd be looking at in the next updates
Beyond tracking & documentation, Users want to be able to Link their debts and loans with other users
There's currently no way to track instalments payments, to know how much has been paid and how much is still owed
19% of Moolah users testing the app need a way to consolidate their debts
joint loan application: being able to request a loan together with another borrower.
An edit option in the clients details, windows version, export to files, Sort list in Lending, daily report and so on
Some Users are interested in collaborative document editing that allows both borrowers and lenders to efficiently work on and review loan documentation.
I learnt something in this process: Users may not really be aware of all the features they need until they interact with a working product. This highlights the importance of building MVPs and iterating based on feedback to better meet user needs.
Yes, we did. We know this because we've tested with real people and the feedback suggests we did and we're still in the process. Moolah has achieved some milestones after several weeks of beta testing
Analytics shows a sevenfold global peer-to-peer money lending increase between 2014 and 2015 alone – from $9 billion to $64 billion; and will reach a projected value of $1 trillion by 2050. The team hopes to grow the total P2P lending volume in the market by 30% , and making it the largest P2P lending platform with at least a 35% market share by 2030. They've validated the market for this and are working towards making it possible. Some next steps:
