VIO IS A Cross-border money transfer app that can send & receive airtime instantly using cryptocurrency tokens.
Across Africa, remittance solutions are typically among the most expensive in the world, with transaction charges as high as 20% in some cases. Additionally, these services are slow to release fund 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 product 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.
Our first task was naming the service and branding it. Ultimately we settled on Vio which worked on a couple of levels. Firstly it's close to "via" which we thought was a nice way of visualising the journey your funds would take from you to the receiver. Secondly, it contains "IO" which represents the flow of digital data as well as standing 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.
Once we had a name and a beautiful logo, we conducted workshops with our client to map out the system using visa and third party APIs. Once the system was mapped out, we designed the user experience and created user flows to try 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.
Once we were happy the user experience was simple and easy to use, we designed apps for IOS and Android and created a website to explain the service and give some background on the founders and partners. Credibility and transparency around fees was key to launch a product like this and help secure funding to scale the service and keep everything running.
As new opportunities have been identified, we have continuously improved and enhanced the VIO service and platform, rolling out updates and adjusting the roadmap.
This project started out with a simple idea: to create a way to transfer money using Ethereum tokens and the blockchain. Once the service was live, we noticed that people were holding onto the Vio tokens and hoping they would make money as the value of the tokens increased. We had to find a way to encourage people to use their tokens to transfer funds instead of hoarding them as they do with other cryptocurrency tokens.
Airtime is treated as currency in many African markets and can be bought, sold and traded for goods and services. This served as inspiration to adapt the service to our key market’s needs. The ability to transfer Airtime was added to provide extra utility for Africans and encourage users to make use of Vio’s fast and cheap remittance service.
Airtime is treated as currency in many African markets and can be bought, sold and traded for goods and services. This served as inspiration to adapt the service to our key market’s needs. The ability to transfer Airtime was added to provide extra utility for Africans and encourage users to make use of Vio’s fast and cheap remittance service.