What does building for Nigerian crypto users teach you about product experience?

When you first started communicating about crypto to Nigerian consumers, what did you learn about the questions shaping how people approached the product?

I learned how practical people’s concerns are. In product management, the focus is usually the experience: how do we get the user from point A to point B? But when you build in crypto for Nigerian consumers, the questions go beyond the experience. They are fundamentally about trust.

People want to know: What can I actually use crypto for? How do I get my money out if something goes wrong? What will a transaction cost me? And if something goes wrong, who can I contact and who is accountable?

Someone can be interested in the category and still hesitate to put their money into a product they don’t fully understand. So education, utility that builds familiar habits, and credible reasons to trust the company all become part of the product experience.

How did those insights influence what you thought the product needed to do?

They made me think about what happens after you’ve convinced someone to try the product. When you educate people about crypto, you’re also creating an expectation, and the product has to follow through on it: straightforward verification, funding without unnecessary friction, a seamless first transaction, and clarity at each stage.

Perhaps the instructions aren’t clear. Perhaps something is missing. Perhaps the information exists, but not at the moment the customer needs it.

What role did product design play in helping users navigate a category they were still learning?

Design can make the next step understandable, even when someone is still learning. Take onboarding. If you keep asking users to submit one thing after another without showing where it ends, they feel they’re perpetually submitting information. They experience fatigue before they’ve even committed.

Something as simple as a progress bar helps. If a user can see they’re 50% or 80% through, they have a clearer sense of the commitment. Error messages are another basic example. “Something went wrong” tells the user nothing. Was it their fault? The app? Their internet connection?

Were there parts of the customer journey where trust had to be deliberately built?

Identity verification is one of the most obvious. You’re asking for sensitive information, and people don’t know how securely it will be stored. Another is confirming a transaction. Imagine a withdrawal that fails halfway: the money has left the wallet but hasn’t reached the bank. The user doesn’t know where their money is. That’s where someone panics if trust hasn’t already been built in.

You should never create an experience where a customer’s heart is racing and their fingers are crossed. One way to prevent it is accurate transaction statuses:

That gives people greater independence and autonomy over their money.

Can you share a product tweak that came directly from something users struggled with?

During identity verification, because of our provider, users had to physically photograph their identity documents. Most people on the mobile app aren’t walking around with their international passport or NIN slip. They’d reach that stage, realise they needed the document, and drop off. Some would say, “I’ll do it when I get home,” and never return.

The change was small: we let users simply enter their BVN or NIN instead. There’s still room to simplify, for example a shortcode that lets users retrieve their BVN at the moment they need it, since many people don’t remember the number.

How did you balance simplicity for a new user with enough information to make decisions about their money?

My principle is simple: identify what the person needs to know at that point in time to make the decision in front of them. Before verification, tell them what they’ll need to submit. When funding an account, tell them how long it will take, what it will cost, and what to expect.

That matters in crypto because many first-time users have no mental model of what is supposed to happen. If details are ambiguous, you create tension.

What told you people were moving from cautiously trying the product to using it repeatedly?

The clearest signal is what happens after someone’s first successful transaction. The first few are often tests. Someone with an alternative is comparing: is this better, faster, cheaper? Someone without one is asking whether the product is useful enough to become routine.

Look for return and regular use. It won’t look the same for everyone: once a week, once a month on payday, every day. The important thing is continuity. Referrals help, but there’s an even stronger signal when users talk about the product without being incentivised. Positive user-generated conversations that bring in new users suggest people are moving from experimenting to relying.

What did building for Nigerian customers at such an early stage of the crypto market teach you about earning trust through experience?

For Nigerian consumers, trust is not tied only to the brand. It’s closely tied to financial realities. For some, it’s earning more. For others, it’s access to their money whenever they need it, very low fees, or reliability: knowing they won’t be stranded. Trust can come from any of these forms of value.

Spending power is shrinking, so people are more guarded about where their money goes. You have to be very clear about what you’re offering, what it will cost, and what the risks are. If people don’t understand the risks and things go wrong, the consequences extend beyond the transaction to a much larger trust problem for the brand.