Onit Microfinance Bank
Lead Product Designer, Growth
Lead the brand and products design of trust-building experiences & viral growth mechanics to drive app adoption and retention.
Team: Cross-functional team. 2 designers, 4 product managers, 8 engineers, and operations team building for iOS, Android and USS
www.onitbank.com
The Problem
Kenya's 2.4M SMEs face an expensive & fragmented banking system
M-Pesa charges 1-3% per transaction and controls 95%+ of mobile money movement in Kenya. Traditional banks require $500+ minimum balances, and account opening takes weeks. This leaves 65% of SMEs to operate entirely in cash, losing an estimated $2B annually to inefficient financial establishments, limiting their ability to grow.
?
How do you build trust and drive viral adoption when users are skeptical, locked into a competitor's network, and you have limited resources?
The Onit Ecosystem
SMEs weren't avoiding digital finance because they didn't understand it, they were rationally opting out of systems that didn't serve them.
I created this Onit Persona diagram to explain the ecosystem’s interconnectedness to the Product, Engineering and Design Teams.
*Image created using Midjourney and FigJam
Key Finding:
The Cash Trap
SMEs rely heavily on cash transactions and informal lending networks - not by choice, but because:
Traditional banks had high fees and minimum balances
M-Pesa was expensive for business transactions
Informal networks (family, suppliers) filled the credit gap.
What This Meant for Design: We couldn't just build "a better banking app"; we had to design for the entire ecosystem of relationships: how merchants pay suppliers, how they collect from customers, how they access credit, and how they build trust in a new system.
Business Constraints
❌ Limited marketing budget
❌ Skewed existing user base primarily expecting loans
❌ Needed to achieve viral growth (CAC had to be near zero)
❌ Tight timeline: 6 months to launch
Technical & Regulatory Constraints
❌ Integration with existing banking infrastructure/ processes
KYC regulatory requirements
Consumer protection disclosures (transparent pricing, T&Cs, data protection, real time transaction notifications & receipts)
❌ Real-time transaction processing limits
❌ Intermittent connectivity
❌ Low-end Android devices + feature phones
User Constraints
❌ Distrust of "free" financial products
❌ M-Pesa behavioral lock
❌ Very high Day 7 and Day 30 churn norms in market
❌ Low digital literacy
Designing Tiered KYC
The Constraint Conflict:
Regulatory requirement: Full KYC before account access
User need: Immediate value or high drop off
Business need: High completion rates
Key learnings from protyping:
Users dropped off almost immediately if too much sensitive financial info was asked for outright - no ID’s in hand, no KRA pin, bad lighting for KYC selfies etc…
Options:
Full KYC = regulatory compliant but 27 steps to full completion meant high drop-off rates, killing activation metrics
No KYC = Instant access, great KYC but non-compliant
Tiered KYC = Balanced approach with more techincal complexity*
Designing Tiered KYC
Decision: Tiered KYC for MVP
Created "first basic account" with transaction limits
Users could add/ send small amounts immediately
Progressive verification unlocked higher limits and business features
Clear communication about what they could do now vs. later with business accounts
The trade-offs
✅ Immediate value → reduced early churn
❌ More complex system to build (engineering push-back)
Multiple account states instead of one (for credit users as well)
Transaction limits had to be enforced dynamically
More complex testing, monitoring, and support tooling
Why it mattered
We turned KYC from a blocker into a retention lever. Something that unlocked value instead of blocking users.
Impact:
Users who completed Tier 1 had 3× higher Day 7 retention than those forced into full KYC upfront because they gained trust as they learned more about the product.
Other Initiatives
I worked on:
Design system documentation to increase design velocity and handoff with engineers
Notifications for upcoming payments and available payment options
Branding and product marketing.
Education modules explaining digital banking fundamentals for first-time users
Payment links to request payments for offrails users.
Sales agent app for our field team to monitor and manage leads.
and many more…
