Easier Payments with Remita

Remita is a payment platform designed and developed by SystemSpecs – an award-winning FinTech company in West Africa. They were the first to give customers the ability to see multiple bank balances on a single screen, and they are the powerful engine which powers the Federal Government of Nigeria’s Treasury Single Account project – the largest and most successful of its kind in Africa. Needless to say, I was quite honored to work with innovators and game changers of this caliber.

Project Overview

Brand Identity Brand Management Product Design Design Direction UX Writing Illustration

My Role

I was brought in as a UI/UX consultant but worked with different departments in various capacities. This cross-functional role was involved in product development, marketing, strategy, and, of course, design.

The Challenge

Making the outside match the inside.

The challenge faced was that Remita was going through a rebrand. Their product, evidently successful, was due for an upgrade. Not only aesthetically but also in terms of accessibility. The platform, till then, has been a web application and the business need to cater to the mass market and not just businesses was now pressing.

Cue in the Remita Mobile App.

The team had worked on a mobile version of the web app but required some design direction to fall in line with the new brand. Though the following parts of the project happened simultaneously and in a very agile manner, I will start with the visual rebrand – which is what ultimately dictated the UI for the mobile & web apps.

The Rebrand

Working with a partner creative agency, I refined the submission by customizing the font and grounding the color scheme to what is now the new logo.

Once the new logo was approved and the brand guide fleshed out – the UI for the app was explored. The rollout of the new look was reflected across all the print material.

The Facelift

One of the main challenges faced was the constraint of a ready-to-deploy application. UI could give the application a face-lift, but it would be UX, that will incite the rethink of flows and features.

One of the first tasks to under the mouse (not a knife? Cause, surgery? Facelift? No? Ok. Onwards.) were the assets. Using the new brand guide, I designed a new icon pack to build a consistent look for the features.

Maintaining the framework of the current app was the direction taken in the end, but this was not after a few rounds of design iterations.

I would say an upside of this route was skipping extensive wireframe generation and heading straight to mockups and prototypes – but this was still a pretty robust application, so we were neck-deep in user flows, screen reviews, and feature adjustments.

The website and web application also got upgraded right after following the new theme.

This is just a glimpse at what went into the rebrand of Remita, and the eventual launch of the mobile app.

To be a key part of the successful transition of this classic application into a modern-day tool used by millions of people and thousands of business organizations was definitely a rewarding experience.

As the Brand Manager and UI/UX Lead, I was given the opportunity to briefly speak at the official launch of the mobile app in 2017. Check the clip below.

PS: If you are viewing from Nigeria, head on over to the App OR Play Stores and download the app – after all, payments should be easy!