Working with Yango Pay

Our team operated out of the Dubai office of Yango, a global brand of the well-known Russian tech company Yandex. Over an immersive 1.5-year journey, I led the design efforts for Yango Pay, focusing on transforming the financial experience for users across Africa — particularly in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

My role involved deeply understanding local user behavior, adapting the product to regional economic realities, and creating intuitive financial flows tailored to the unique mobile money ecosystems in these markets.

Crafting Financial Connections Across Continents

At Yango Pay, I led product design for a suite of fintech features built specifically for the African market — with a focus on Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Our goal was to create a mobile wallet experience that felt modern, human, and deeply localized.

We launched:

• Emotion-driven money transfers, where users could attach emojis, Giphy animations, or even AI-generated images to their money transfers — turning a routine transaction into something expressive and memorable.

• Virtual Visa and MasterCard cards, fully integrated into the app, giving users access to global payment systems without needing a physical bank account.

• The foundation for a driver-focused credit system, offering microloans to taxi drivers, with plans to scale into a Buy Now, Pay Later feature for the broader population — enabling split payments in four installments.

• A refreshed mobile money flow with improved UX for top-ups and peer-to-peer transfers, tailored to the behaviors of local users and their preferred payment methods.

These features were all part of a broader effort to rethink everyday financial interactions — making them more intuitive, inclusive, and emotionally engaging for millions of people in emerging markets.

Yango Pay: Seamless, Secure Payments for Everyday Convenience

Yango Pay is an e-wallet integrated into the Yango app, allowing users to easily top up their balance via mobile money and make cashless payments for rides. The service offers prepaid wallets for taxi services, supports cashless transactions, refunds, and balance top-ups through bank accounts.

Yango Pay aims to provide a safe, fast, and convenient online payment experience, particularly in African countries like Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.

Figma Prototype:

Designing the Yango Pay Landing Page

To support product growth and user education, I designed a dedicated landing page for Yango Pay — aimed at showcasing the product’s core features and helping new users understand how to get started.

The page combined clear visual storytelling with concise explanations of key flows: mobile top-ups, P2P transfers, emotional money-sending, and virtual card setup. I focused on creating a layout that felt light, mobile-first, and localized — both visually and in terms of tone.

The design was fully responsive, built with scalability in mind, and aligned with Yango’s broader design system. We also tested different variations of the hero block and CTA structure to improve conversion.

This landing page became a key tool for onboarding users, supporting partnership pitches, and increasing trust in the product.

Designing the Agent Management Interface for Yango Pay

As part of the Yango Pay ecosystem, I designed a web-based admin interface that allowed managers to oversee and control networks of money exchange agents operating within the app.

Through this interface, users could:

• View a structured list of agents under their supervision, with the ability to add, edit, or remove agent profiles.

• Track key metrics on a real-time dashboard, including the number of transactions, current balances, and calculated commissions for each agent.

• Monitor activity and performance across the network to ensure transparency, accountability, and efficient operations.

The design focused on clarity, speed, and usability — turning a complex operational system into a simple, intuitive control panel for managing financial agents in the field.

Gratitude

I’m genuinely thankful for the time I spent working on Yango Pay. It was more than just a job — it was a chance to be part of something meaningful. I got to design a product that helped real people solve real financial problems in places where good tools can make a huge difference.

I’m especially grateful to the amazing teams in Dubai and Moscow — working alongside such talented, driven people pushed me to grow as a designer and as a teammate. I learned a lot, was constantly challenged, and came out of this experience stronger, more confident, and even more inspired to build technology that truly matters.