By Ayo Onikoyi

As Nigeria’s fintech sector scales at record speed, the need for secure, trustworthy digital experiences has never been more urgent.

In a country where millions are actively engaging with financial technology for the first time, trust has become a quiet but critical design challenge.

With the rise in mobile transactions, agent networks, and digital savings platforms, users face new risks; scams, identity theft, and uncertainty around how their money is handled.

For designers like Iyabode Atoyebi, trust isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a product requirement. And in a market where many users are skeptical of technology, she’s designing financial experiences that feel not only usable, but safe, transparent, and deeply human.

Iyabode is a product designer at Bankly, a Nigerian fintech building inclusive financial infrastructure for the unbanked and underbanked. Bankly’s mission is to digitize cash and provide secure, reliable savings and payments for millions of Nigerians who have historically relied on informal financial systems. At the heart of that mission is a simple, pressing question: How do you design financial products for people who’ve never had a bank account and who’ve been taught to be skeptical of technology?

Since joining Bankly, Iyabode has focused on solving this trust gap. But her journey into product design wasn’t always about fintech or interfaces. It began with an early interest in problem-solving, and later, a curiosity about how people interact with technology, how they think, how they trust, and how they protect themselves. That curiosity naturally led her toward cybersecurity.

“I realized that design isn’t just about how something looks or works. It’s about how safe someone feels using it, especially when money is involved,” she says.

Her passion for cybersecurity influences her design philosophy. She approaches product development not just from the lens of usability but also through the lens of user safety, psychological security, and risk perception. In a region where scams, social engineering, and distrust in digital systems are common, these considerations are critical.

At Bankly, this means designing onboarding flows that are simple yet thorough, helping users verify identities without friction. It means rethinking how error messages are written, how alerts feel, and how much control users have over their own transactions. It means advocating for micro-interactions that reinforce security; like giving users feedback when their money is safe, or using plain language to explain what’s happening behind the scenes.

But beyond interface elements, Iyabode is also deeply focused on designing systems that earn trust over time. She collaborates closely with engineers, product managers, and compliance teams to ensure features like agent onboarding, biometric authentication, and fraud reporting are not just functional but intuitive and transparent.

Through her work, she’s proving that cybersecurity is not just the job of backend teams or infosec specialists. It starts from the moment a user touches the screen. And for Iyabode, it starts by asking: “Would I trust this if I were in their shoes?”

She’s also vocal about the need for more designers in fintech to think like cybersecurity advocates, to challenge assumptions, to push for clarity over complexity, and to prioritize the safety of low-literacy, first-time users.

Looking ahead, Iyabode envisions a financial ecosystem in Nigeria where human-centered security design becomes standard, not exceptional. She hopes to build and contribute to communities that bridge the gap between UX and cybersecurity—where designers are equipped not only to make things work, but to make people feel safe.

Because in the end, she believes trust isn’t a feature you ship. It’s the result of every decision you make along the way.