The Marco Polo Network moves trade finance transactions with security built into the ledger itself. The question was what happens when you point that at supply chain logistics, where a buyer, a supplier, and a bank all need to agree on a loan, its interest, and its settlement.
My job was the loan lifecycle: setup, approval, drawdown, and settlement, designed so a banker could trust it on the first pass and a supplier could finish it without training.
I worked on this alongside Shovo Poddar, a designer I shared a team with from 2016 to 2024. Nine months on this product together.
Finance still
runs on fax.
Loans get arranged over email, fax, and phone calls between parties who cannot see each other's records. Every handoff is a chance for a number to drift, and nothing moves quickly when the market does.
Three parties, no shared view
- Buyer, supplier, and bank each work from their own records
- Status lives in someone's inbox
- Every step needs chasing
Manual data, drifting numbers
- Figures re-keyed at every handoff
- Stock and loan records disagree
- Paper settlement slows everything
Banking rules are not optional
- Every action needs a second pair of eyes
- Audit trails must hold up to review
- Security standards constrain the interface
Goals
- Automate loan setup so parties chase each other less
- Make every party's position visible to the others
- Cut cost by making settlement paperless with eSign
- Design maker-checker approval into the flow, not around it
- Get stakeholder sign-off fast enough to keep the build moving
Research
- In banking, the second approver is the product, not an edge case
- Trust comes from showing state, not from reassuring copy
- Unhappy paths are where finance software is actually judged
- Aligning with the CEO early bought speed later
Strategy into
interface
Loan lifecycle
Setup, approval, drawdown, interest, and settlement as one continuous flow, with each party seeing exactly where the loan stands and what it needs from them next.
Maker-checker
approvals
Banking requires two people to complete a transaction. I designed the four-eyes principle into every stage of the lifecycle: who submitted, who verified, what changed, and what is still waiting on a second signature.
Paperless
settlement
Documents, invoices, and communications generated from templates and signed in place, so a settlement that used to travel by courier now closes inside the platform.
- Regulated products reward designers who learn the rules first
- Multi-party software lives or dies on shared state
- Mapping unhappy paths early saved months of rework
- A shared design system let two designers move like four
Conclusion
A loan process that ran on email and paper became a single automated lifecycle that banks were willing to put their name against. Designing compliance into the flow rather than around it is what made a blockchain trade finance product feel like ordinary, trustworthy software.