The Problem We Were Actually Solving
I was tasked with building a payment system for freelance workers in Nigeria, where traditional platforms like PayPal are not available. The existing solutions were either too expensive or unreliable, resulting in a significant loss of earnings for the workers. My goal was to design a system that could handle payments efficiently and securely, without relying on these conventional platforms. After conducting research, I realized that the problem was not just about payment processing, but also about providing access to financial services for the unbanked population. I had to consider the limitations of the local banking system, the high cost of transactions, and the lack of trust in digital payment methods.
What We Tried First (And Why It Failed)
Initially, we attempted to use a popular open-source payment gateway that supported multiple payment methods. However, we soon discovered that it was not optimized for the local market, and the transaction fees were prohibitively high. We also encountered issues with the gateway's API, which was not designed to handle the unique requirements of the Nigerian payment system. For example, the gateway did not support the Nigerian Naira currency, and the payment processing times were slow due to the lack of direct connections with local banks. We spent several weeks trying to customize the gateway, but ultimately, we realized that it was not the right solution for our needs. The error rates were high, with a failure rate of 30% due to invalid transactions, and the average transaction processing time was 5 seconds, which was unacceptable for our use case.
