Travelex, a global leader in foreign exchange, sought to expand its capabilities in cross-border remittances, a rapidly growing market, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The goal was to explore a next-generation wallet-to-wallet solution built on blockchain technology, enabling users to send and receive funds seamlessly without relying on traditional banking infrastructure.

Project:
The initiative focused on designing a white-labelled digital wallet service, with a strong emphasis on delivering flexibility to recipients and simplicity for senders. The service would be built around blockchain infrastructure and aimed to serve users in emerging markets. A Service Design consultant led the Discovery and Definition phases, aligning cross-functional teams around product strategy and user experience.

Challenge:
The proposition represented a significant shift from current remittance behaviour particularly for senders, who would need to trust a system that used minimal recipient information and offered unfamiliar user flows. Legal, operational, and compliance teams also lacked visibility into the transactional “money path,” creating uncertainty around risk management and accountability. Adoption and feasibility were both in question.

Solution:
A hypothesis-driven approach was adopted to test assumptions, explore user needs, and align stakeholders. Prototypes of key wallet features such as local currency conversion vs. crypto access were tested with users in India and Ghana via a remote research plan. Simultaneously, the team facilitated a series of iterative, cross-functional workshops to map the end-to-end service and define operational roles. This blueprinting process gave legal and ops teams the clarity needed to move forward, while also helping product and design align around a unified experience.

Outcome:
The project defined a bold, disruptive value proposition with no direct equivalent on the Fintech market. It also fostered a new way of working, bringing product, engineering, legal, ops, research, and design into a collaborative, hypothesis-led process. The resulting service concept had a clear customer promise, validated user insights, and stronger internal alignment.

Bugdet range: £20-22K

Service

Sector

Collaboration with design team for prototyping

FIrst in a series of 4 workshops