Info
I was contracted at Lance to update their website and build a product for their credit provision service. I worked extensively on the product with support from another designer on the team, Wisdom Ndebe. Together, we collaborated to build the system known as Lance Credit today.
The goal was clear: to make credit easy and accessible to all, one step at a time.
As my first time working on a product that deals with credit across Africa (and in Nigeria), I had to do a deep research into the credit system. At the time, I realised that Nigeria had no concrete credit score system and had to convince the team to build our own unique system to understand the scores of our users.
After this, I did more research into credit and repayments, and focused on how to improve and simplify the experience, without hiding any processes or steps, and to experience credit with top-security.
🚀 Lance Credit is currently in private beta with plans to launch in Q4 2025.
Millions of individuals lack access to traditional financial services due to the limitations of current credit scoring systems that primarily rely on formal employment and salary history. This exclusion creates significant barriers to building financial security and pursuing opportunities.
The old Lance Credit website has little to no context about Lance's services. It only highlights one service - Lending and Borrowing from the people within your network, which is a service currently only available on mobile.
However, Lance Credit is providing direct access to credit to its users and also creating a system where users can request and receive loans from friends and family.
All of these had to be done by creating a better visual experience that clearly communicates their offerings.
An Intermediary model of credit. Lance will
Provide its loans directly to pre-qualified individuals, where part of the qualification is through referral or community involvement.
Make it easy for people to facilitate, record, and manage loans with each other, leading to a better credit lifestyle, building their credit history, and ensuring they are credit-worthy for future opportunities.
These activities are geared towards raising the 'creditworthiness' of the borrowers to a level sufficient enough to make them attractive to the lenders.
Individuals
Freelancers and gig workers
Creators
Digital tech workers
To further shape a better experience for users and businesses, I analyzed the strategies employed by similar businesses. This enables me to understand the effectiveness of the existing solutions and the areas that could be improved upon.
The products I looked at were: Carbon, RenMoney, Aella, PalmPay, FairMoney, and Branch.
Building Lance Credit proved that trust is the real currency. Users cared less about extra features and far more about a clear loan summary, transparent fees, and an upfront repayment system.
Going forward, we’ll merge the peer-to-peer and direct-from-Lance loan flows into one seamless platform, then iterate on everything we’ve learned from our first wave of customers to make borrowing even simpler and faster.
