ashmita

Canyon

Accelerating trade finance digitisation

ACTIVE CLIENTS

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My work has been recreated with NDA-protected data removed, identifiable content masked. The situational descriptions, qualitative impact and processes are canonical.

OVERVIEW

Background

Canyon provides a channel for digitised Letters of Credit, one of the most paper-intensive processes in trade finance.

It was a digital platform setup by 8 banks, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and BNP Paribas (acquired by Xalts in 2024)

Xalts is backed by Accel and Citi Ventures (USD $6M funding)

As attributed in Forbes

Headquarters

Hong Kong

Industry

Trade Finance

Revenue

~$700K USD (2022)

Challenge

The tool lacked with modularity, imposing inflexible constraints that did not address the diverse needs of its users. Enterprises faced a lengthy onboarding sales cycle, and end-user feedback was often buried under layers of bureaucracy. While growth was steady, retention remained low due to a lack of focus on client feature requests.

SOLUTION

94% decrease in processing times

Apart from paring down a 48 process down to 3 hours, the relaunch included innovation such as mixed payment instructions, customisable approvals, and corporates being able to use standardised letter of credit templates, thus speeding up the creation of new financing requests.

As attributed in the Global Trade Review

Canyon is a platform to manage trade finance documentation and connect to banks

PRODUCT DESIGN • ENTERPRISE • LEADERSHIP

RESEARCH

Understanding the problem space

For Canyon, there were two primary user groups: executives and trade team members. On the executive side, we had a lot of information. Our teams talked to sales reps, and strategy heads we heard about their needs, wants and pain points. This gave us the ability to start focusing on small features with high impact. What we lacked was information about the end users. So we focused on fixing that.

UX PROCESSES

Transforming processes with design thinking

I mobilised design processes, hired and mentored 4 designers, formalised handoffs, and initiated weekly design meetings to increase cross-team transparency.

Rapidly iterated upon interactive prototypes and concepts, conducted generative and evaluative research.

DESIGN SYSTEM

Unifying the design language

Established and maintained a global Salt Digital Design Language (SDDL) as a foundation of a family of design systems with documentation, designed and coded components

Multi-hatted the setup of a live Storybook UI library with well defined guidelines and following atomic design principles. This improved the scalability of product verticals and simplified the process of designing, sharing, and collaborating on UI components.

SELF-SERVICE SIGN UP

Onboarding to a freemium model

Self service signup led to a test mode freemium version of Canyon. Now instead of relying on traditional sales teams, we allowed potential customers to experience the product firsthand. Building this feature shortened the sales cycle. It also builds trust as — not just the decision-maker or buyer, but the end users were able to directly see the value of the platform.

As users become more engaged, their satisfaction often leads to organic growth through word-of-mouth and increased adoption across entire organisations. Product-Led-Growth is also not just about expansion, but about retention. Understanding what our golden features were and promoting those to users became crucial.

IMPACT

Results

  • Product Led Growth via free trials and freemium subscriptions, leading to better reception and word of mouth approvals.Upfront payment model to a credit-based subscription model. This led to better acquisition and better retention for executives and decision makers as they would be paying on a per-usage basis instead. We were also able to offer free credits for potential customers to try out our product.

  • A streamlined channel for feedback and support tickets to reach teams

  • Layered customisable approval processes instead of a standardised approver.

  • The relaunch mixed payment instructions and standardised letter of credit templates, thus speeding up the creation of new financing requests.

  • Integrating the global SWIFT MT700 standard Letter of Credit format.

  • Decreased processing times from an average of 10 days to <24 hours end-to-end. ¹

As attributed in the Global Trade Review ¹

CHALLENGES

Learnings

With enterprise tools, the team is building products that help massive organisations and their employees do their work better. A seemingly simple feature needed to comply with stringent regulations around data safety & localisation, to name a few.

The Letter-of-Credit flow mirrors the arduous processes of negotiating documentary terms, application, issuance, advising, amendment request and approvals, document presentation, discrepancy resolution, and payment instructions.

Embracing flexibility and modularity.

One key learning was to build with a view that Canyon is meant to evolve and grow. This ensured equal emphasis on making pieces adaptable and scalable to future needs. A holistic approach to all facets, devices and media helped with creating a coherent & consistent product experience

CONCLUSION

Concentric circles of money

The vision for this product revamp was to drive digitisation in the financial operations space to simplify and speed up the exchange of data and value. This will enable better risk attribution, reduce the inefficiencies in current processes and unlock capital availability.