Farhad Hassan | UX, Interaction & DesignOps

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PayWell Corporate

One platform for the services a Bangladeshi business runs on

One platform for the

services a Bangladeshi business runs on

Travel, mobile recharge, conveyance, and payments in one app, with every invoice in one place.

Role

Lead product designer, research to shipped.

Fintech

Lead Designer

The scale of the problem

80%

HR teams stuck in fragmented, multi vendor workflows

Cut from monthly operating cost

60%

Employees delayed waiting on services

Weekly invoice errors, down from 160

70%

Finance teams struggling to track transactions and approvals

Retailers reached across the country

80%

Cut from monthly operating cost

60%

Employees delayed waiting on services

70%

Retailers reached across the country

Overview

PayWell Corporate is ShopUp's all in one app for Bangladeshi businesses. It pulls everyday services a company buys for its staff, mobile recharge, travel, conveyance, and payments, into one funded platform, with a downloadable invoice on every transaction.

Owned the app end to end, from HR interviews and competitor analysis to shipped V1, working with stakeholders, the brand team, and engineering throughout.

Approval and budget tracking happen in a companion admin panel. The focus here is the app, where services are bought and paid.

Owned the app end to end, from HR interviews and competitor analysis to shipped V1, working with stakeholders, the brand team, and engineering throughout.

Approval and budget tracking happen in a companion admin panel. The focus here is the app, where services are bought and paid.

The problem

A company buys dozens of small services for its staff every day. Today each one runs through a different vendor and a chain of approvals from different teams.

Employee sends a request

Travel, recharge, or conveyance

Approved by three people

HR, line manager, and finance

Can HR fulfil it?

HR procures from outside

Partners, apps, or companies

HR hands over the service

Tickets, recharge, or cash

Invoice sent to finance

Filed by hand for the audit

Employee pays personally

Own money, no budget check

Employee submits invoice

Chases HR to get it back

Finance reimburses later

Bank transfer or, MFS app

Employee sends a request

Travel, recharge, or conveyance

Approved by three people

HR, line manager, and finance

Can HR fulfil it?

HR procures from outside

Partners, apps, or companies

HR hands over the service

Tickets, recharge, or cash

Invoice sent to finance

Filed by hand for the audit

Employee pays personally

Own money, no budget check

Employee submits invoice

Chases HR to get it back

Finance reimburses later

Bank transfer or, MFS app

The cost of the current loop

Fragmented

No single vendor covers travel, recharge, and conveyance, so HR juggles many partners.

Uncontrolled

Employees often front the money and claim it back later, with no budget or guardrail on the spend.

Hard to audit

Invoices sit in different places, so finance cannot reconcile cleanly.

Fragmented

No single vendor covers travel, recharge, and conveyance, so HR juggles many partners.

Uncontrolled

Employees often front the money and claim it back later, with no budget or guardrail on the spend.

Hard to audit

Invoices sit in different places, so finance cannot reconcile cleanly.

A scan of what businesses use today confirmed the gap. Every existing app covers one slice, send money, or flights, or bus, or recharge, and none handle the approvals or, invoices and audit becomes messy.

Send Money

MFS apps

Travel Booking

Flights only

Travel Booking

Buses only

Balance Recharge

Service provider apps

Send Money

Bank apps

Send Money

MFS Apps

Travel Booking

Flights only

Travel Booking

Buses only

Balance Recharge

Service Provider Apps

Send Money

Bank Apps

Solution, consolidate the spend & control the budget

The hard part was never the payment. It was the operation around it. The real need was consolidation and control.

Fund

The company loads a budget into the app, split by team or business unit.

Buy

HR or, procurement purchases service from that balance, recharge, travel, conveyance, with a invoice each time.

Track

The money is pre-funded, so no one spends first & claims later. A companion panel handles approvals & shows what each team has used.

Fund

No single vendor covers travel, recharge, and conveyance, so HR juggles many partners.

Buy

HR or, procurement purchases service from that balance, recharge, travel, conveyance, with a invoice each time.

Track

Invoices sit in different places, so finance cannot reconcile cleanly.

Fund, buy, track. Three steps against the three costs, and the rest of the product follows from them.

The companion panel

The app buys and invoices. The panel approves, tracks each unit's budget, and notifies the employee.

Aligning business, product,

& the regulator

Aligning business, product, & the regulator

Before any screens, I aligned the people who could make or break it, business, product, brand, and Bangladesh Bank's regulators, across three working sessions.

Business and operations

Aligned on goals and compliance needs with stakeholders.

Strategy and flow mapping

Worked with PMs to scope V1 and map the core journeys.

Regulatory

Worked with compliance regulators to define onboarding and data process.

Business and operations

Aligned on goals and compliance needs with stakeholders.

Strategy and flow mapping

Worked with PMs to scope V1 and map the core journeys.

Regulatory

Worked with compliance regulators to define onboarding and data process.

Seven flows, funded from one balance

Onboarding user

Live selfie, NID, and address, to regulator standards. Required documents change with the business type, sole proprietorship, retail, or online shop, so each user only faces the checks that apply to them.

Onboarding business KYC

Dashboard

The control center for a feature heavy app. Balance and its core actions sit together at the top, services use 3D icons that imply the outcome, and recent activity sits below. A toggle masks the balance for privacy.

Add money

Load the wallet from a bank, debit, or credit card to buy services for employees.

Recharge

Top up or buy cellular packages or, data and talk time on any operator in Bangladesh.

Flight booking

Only the essentials show upfront, the rest tucks behind a tap. The result card surfaces price, refund policy, time, airline, stops, and duration at a glance. Shaped by studying the strongest competitor flows.

Bus booking

The same clarity first pattern. A seat map with live availability and a deck toggle, with key trip info pinned at the top.

Key decisions

The flows above shipped. These were the calls that

shaped how they feel.

The flows above shipped. These were the calls that shaped how they feel.

Decision 01

Show what changes a decision, hide the rest

Maintaining a balance of data is critical for flight selection. I kept six on the card, price with the original struck through, refund policy, times, airports, airline, and stops with flight time.

Air rules and the finer print sit behind a details tap, with the price and confirm bar pinned to the bottom.

Decision 02

Localize to how people actually speak

English banking terms do not land with every user here. I worked with the brand team to translate the interface into Bangla phonetics, using familiar expressions for complex features, then refined the wording with real user feedback.

English
Bangla

Decision 03

Let compliance flex, not block

Onboarding has to satisfy regulators, but a single rigid form would punish a small shop. The flow adapts its required documents to the business type, so nobody fills in checks that do not apply to them.

What shipped in V1

Pre launch, so the honest proof is in use, not metrics. Live in beta with two companies and ShopUp itself.

A real volume test. ShopUp runs thousands of field and delivery staff who need weekly recharges and near constant travel, mostly by bus. Not a token pilot.

What changed

1 platform

One funded platform replaced a stack of vendors for travel, recharge, and conveyance.

Keeping track

The team spends from a per department budget, with a downloadable invoice each time, so finance can track who spent what and no one spends first to claim later.

Localized & compliant

A Bangla first interface and compliance ready onboarding that flexes by business type.

1 platform

One funded platform replaced a stack of vendors for travel, recharge, and conveyance.

Keeping track

The team spends from a per department budget, with a downloadable invoice each time, so finance can track who spent what and no one spends first to claim later.

Localized & compliant

A Bangla first interface and compliance ready onboarding that flexes by business type.

Reflection

Break complexity into reusable parts

Shared components kept a feature heavy app coherent, and made each new flow faster to build.

Let research lead

The HR interviews and competitor study drove the structure, not my assumptions

A new market runs on some assumptions

This is a first mover in Bangladesh, and no one enters an untested market on research alone. The beta is how we learn which bets hold.

What I would change

Running a build this large solo taught me pacing. Next time I would validate the booking flows with real users before shipping.

Reflection