Introduction
Graph is an API-first cross-border payment platform powering African businesses with multi-currency accounts, global supplier payments, and treasury tools.
As we expanded into new markets and onboarded more SMEs and enterprise clients, one operational bottleneck became impossible to ignore: inbound deposits were frequently delayed, mismatched, or missing context.
External bank transfers arrived at Graph with inconsistent references, incomplete metadata, or no identifiers at all — leaving Operations responsible for manually matching payments to the correct business.
This created slow deposit experiences, reconciliation delays, and unnecessary customer anxiety around “missing funds.”
To solve this, we built Deposit Intents, a system that lets businesses declare their incoming transfers before sending them, giving Graph a reliable source of truth to automatically match deposits and eliminate reconciliation uncertainty.
My Role
Is this a real problem?
Before Deposit Intents, incoming transfers, especially USD deposits, were routed through partner banks using pooled accounts.
The banks provided only basic transaction metadata. Different banks formatted references differently, some truncated them entirely, and others replaced customer-provided references with internal codes.
This resulted in four fundamental issues:
Inconsistent Bank References: No reliable way to confidently match an incoming payment to the business that sent it.
Reconciliation Delays: Operations had to manually review and escalate with partner banks, slowing down customer deposits.
High Support Volume: Customers often contacted CX asking, “Where is my money?” even when funds had technically arrived.
Lack of Visibility: Businesses had no way to track the status of inbound transfers until they were fully reconciled.
Deposit Intents addressed these challenges by creating a predictable, structured, and trackable deposit framework.
Defining the Problem
Inbound bank transfers lacked the information Graph needed to automatically reconcile them.
This led to:
Delayed wallet funding
Mismatched payments
Increased operational workload
Lower confidence in the system
Higher friction for SMEs in moments where cash flow was critical
The core question became:
How do we turn unstructured bank transfers into structured, predictable, and automatically matched events?
The Solution
How we reimagined wallet funding and payment reconciliation
Deposit Intents introduced a simple but powerful shift:
Users tell the system what they intend to send and the system handles the matching when the money arrives.
The goals were:
Reduce reconciliation delays
Improve matching accuracy
Provide transparency to users
Give Operations a reliable audit trail
Support market expansion with predictable financial flows
We built 3 core capabilities to achieve this
Structured Deposit Declarations
Businesses declare:
Amount
Currency
Expected timeline
This becomes the system’s “anchor” for matching.
It transforms incoming transfers from unstructured events into predictable workflows.
Smart Matching Engine
When funds arrive, the system checks:
Amount proximity
Currency
Account metadata
Time window
Available references
Historical behavior
If intent = transfer → reconciliation becomes instant.
If a mismatch occurs, Operations gets a flagged exception instead of a mystery.
Deposit Tracking & Transparency
Users finally get visibility:
A pending → matched → completed timeline
Clear deposit instructions
A unique reference
Alerts for mismatches or delays
For SMEs who rely on fast cash flow, this transparency removed unnecessary uncertainty.
UX Foundations
To make Deposit Intents feel effortless, we:
Designed a clean, 3-step flow
Eliminated jargon
Added clear instructions for each sending method
Used language optimized for SMEs, not enterprise analysts
Added expiration rules to prevent stale intents
Designed fallback paths for CX and Operations
Measuring Success
Deposit Intents launched into production and immediately improved operational smoothness and customer trust.
We measure its success across:
Faster Deposit Matching
Reduced manual reconciliation requests and escalations to partner banks.
Fewer “Missing Funds” Tickets
Significant reduction in CX cases around delayed deposits.
Higher Wallet Funding Success Rate
Users gained confidence to send larger and more frequent deposits.
Improved Operational Efficiency
Ops no longer manually chase unclear transactions across bank statements.
Better Cash Flow Predictability for SMEs
Users can now track deposits the moment they send them.