VIO
A cross-border money transfer app using crypto tokens to speed up settlement.
Across Africa, remittance solutions are typically among the most expensive in the world, with transaction charges as high as 20% in some cases. These services are generally slow to release funds making it difficult to send money in an emergency. Migrant workers are hit particularly hard and have very few viable options to send money to their families quickly and safely. Our client saw this as an opportunity to provide a valuable service to Africans.
Since our client was a director of products at Visa SSA, he had a great understanding of the Visa APIs that could be used to create a service that would tick all the boxes, but we were tasked with everything else.
Giving the idea a name.
Our first task was naming the service and branding it. “Vio” works on a couple of levels; firstly it's close to "via" which alludes to the journey funds take from you to a receiver. Secondly, it contains "IO" which represents the flow of digital data and stands for in/out which is what the service helps do with money
We wanted the logo to visually portray the speed and convenience of the service and landed on a design which portrayed this through a single stroke and dot. The stroke crossing over itself represents the cross-border capabilities of the service. It’s also got a bit of an infinity symbol thing going on which is cool in my opinion. Thanks to Zia Dee for taking my sketches and persevering through my pedantic feedback to create something beautiful.
The process.
Once we had a name and a beautiful logo, we conducted workshops to map out the system using visa and third-party APIs. Then we created user flows and challenged ourselves to reduce any complicated steps to as few as possible. We created a way for users to select another Vio user from their contact list to do away with the issues surrounding the sharing of bank details online. All this informed the UX and UI design.
We built IOS and Android apps plus a website that explains the service and gives background on the founders and partners. Credibility and transparency around fees were key to launching a product like this and help secure funding to scale the service and keep everything running.
Continuous improvement.
As new opportunities have been identified, we’ve continuously improved and enhanced the VIO service and platform, rolling out updates and adjusting the roadmap.
Vio started with a simple idea: to create a way to transfer money instantly using Eth tokens. Once the service was live, we saw people were HODLing Vio tokens in the hope of buying Lambos. We had to find a way to encourage people to actually use their tokens to transfer funds instead of hoarding them.
Airtime is treated as currency in many African markets and can be bought, sold and traded for goods and services. We saw this as an opportunity to adapt the service. The ability to transfer Airtime was added to provide extra utility for Africans and encouraged users to make use of Vio’s fast and cheap remittance service.