The goal
Settlements in Nigeria are operations heavy, and Paystack relies on many partners for collections, settlements and payouts. Resolving a payout issue was slow, and User Ops needed engineers to decode errors, estimate how long a fix would take, and decide whether to contact the bank or the merchant.
Objective 01
Give the payout operations team accurate payout information, in tools they can reach, so they can respond to merchants.
Objective 02
Reduce tickets escalated to engineers for decoding error codes, updating payout statuses and retrying payouts.
The problem
01 · Discovery
Research
Issues are spotted by merchants, User Ops or engineers. Wherever they start, they pass to engineers to troubleshoot, then back through User Ops to the merchant, and sometimes to the processor or bank. Along the way the work hops between Slack, Jira, Metabase, Zendesk and Watchtower.
Synthesis
Primary needs
Challenges
Give User Ops the visibility and the controls to resolve payouts themselves.
The opportunity02 · Prioritisation
Prioritisation board
Error handling came first: payouts stuck in processing, changing processors, NIBSS batch ID requests, retrying failed payouts and Wema error codes. Other groups included acquirer settlement debt, reversed payouts, oversettlement and status updates.
03 · Solutions
Recommendation 1a · Visibility
Error codes and their meaning now sit in the payout's audit logs. Successful payouts show their session ID. Failed ones show the processor, the error code and the reason.
Recommendation 1b · User control
Three actions cover the requests that used to go to engineers. Each has clear rules, and every action is written to the logs.
Update payout status
When
Rule
A payout in processing can only be updated once its final state is confirmed with the processor.
Retry payout
When
Rule
Only failed payouts can be retried. User Ops can keep the current processor or switch, for example from NIBSS to Wema.
Apply a deduction
When
Rule
The merchant is notified automatically. If their balance is too low, the rest is deducted on the next payout cycle.
Where the actions live
We explored two placements: a modal opened from an Action button, and a dedicated Action tab beside the logs, shown at the top of this page.
Recommendation 2
Notify the team when a payout has an issue, so they can reach out first.
Share delays and resolutions on the merchant dashboard or by email.
Keep a living guide to error codes that the whole team can use.
04 · Outcome
What shipped
User Ops can now retry Nigerian payouts stuck in processing directly on Watchtower, and see more detail about each payout trial handled by the settlement engine.
Payouts stuck in processing were the biggest payout issue in Nigeria, and the inconclusive state meant a person had to step in. Putting the action on Watchtower lets User Ops handle these without relying on engineering or product.
Expected results
Next project
