Sabi Hero.avif

Challenge: Designing a Unified Ecosystem for Dual Hardware

Pesapal Sabi was an initiative to empower East African merchants by integrating payment acceptance with critical business management tools. The central design challenge was to create a unified, scalable, and intuitive point-of-sale ecosystem across two fundamentally distinct hardware platforms:

1. mPOS: A mobile app (smartphone) paired with a portable Miura payment device (requiring complex Bluetooth connection flows).
2. Smart POS: An all-in-one, Android-powered terminal (requiring on-device business management apps).

The goal was to provide a seamless UX across both platforms, reduce payment friction, and integrate essential features like inventory, sales tracking, and reporting for over 10,000 merchants, while strategically leveraging proven UI/UX patterns from an existing internal app (Duka Manager).

Results: Streamlining Business for 10,000+ Merchants

The integrated mPOS and Smart POS solutions successfully empowered over 10,000 merchants to accept a wide array of payments (EMV, NFC, Mobile Wallets).

• Operational Unification: By seamlessly integrating payment acceptance with on-device business management tools (inventory, reporting, accounting), the ecosystem eliminated reliance on fragmented systems, streamlining daily operations for merchants.
• Accelerated Development: The strategic integration of proven UI/UX patterns from Duka Manager accelerated the design and development cycles, ensuring a consistent, intuitive experience across both mPOS and Smart POS applications from day one.
• Reduced Friction: Key workflow optimizations, particularly in the critical device-pairing process, resulted in higher merchant adoption and reduced reliance on support resources.

My Approach: Strategy, Constraints, and Content

Strategic Ecosystem Definition: I initiated the project with deep research into the global and local merchant ecosystem, including a competitive analysis of leaders like Square and Zettle.

• Action: We defined the strategy: the Smart POS had to be more than a payment terminal; it was an all-in-one business management hub with inventory, accounting, and reporting.
• Outcome: This strategic clarity guided all subsequent design decisions, ensuring the product was positioned as a desirable, affordable alternative to rigid, costly traditional POS systems.

Solving for Key Merchant Friction: Bluetooth Pairing: User research revealed that device-pairing friction was a major point of abandonment for mPOS users. I treated this technical hurdle as a core UX problem.