The freelancer
Has no website. Sends an invoice link to get paid.
How do I ask for crypto without getting it wrong?
Answered in: Invoice formCrypto payments were checked by hand. Nebulox made it automatic.
A crypto payment gateway that replaced manual, screenshot-based payment checks for two internal products: a cross-border payment service and a crypto exchange.
Transfer14:32
Sent 250.00 USDT ≈ $250.00
- To
- TQ7x…9fK2
- Network
- TRON (TRC20)
- Network fee
- 1.00 USDT
- Tx hash
- 7f3a…c91e
- My role
- Product Designer
- Research, testing, UX/UI, design-system components
- Team
- 1 design lead, 2 designers, 1 PM, 6 engineers
- Timeline
- ~1 year, zero to launch
- Outcome
- Both internal products migrated; ready for external merchants
The problem
Payments were verified by eye
- 01
Ali opens a support ticket to pay in crypto.
- 02
Sara types the address and amount into it by hand.
- 03
Ali copies the address and guesses the network.
- 04
He pays and uploads a screenshot as proof.
- 05
Sara compares the screenshot with the wallet by eye.
- 06
Tickets pile up, and Ali’s request slips down the queue.
- 07
Hours later, Ali still doesn’t know if it arrived.
- 08
A wrong network or amount, and the business pays for it.
Discovery
The people doing the checks knew where it broke
The brief came from the business. To see what it didn’t say, I spent time with the product managers of both products and with the ops team who checked payments every day. In short, this is what they told me:
A screenshot can be incomplete, or fake. And the mistake we see most is the wrong network.
Check, approve, then act. Miss one ticket and the customer just waits.
Mistakes come from our side too: a wrong address, a wrong amount. Some of them cost us money.
The insight
The hard part wasn’t sending crypto. It was proving it arrived.
Now the problem was clear, and so was the job. Nebulox had to prove payments on its own, and help people avoid the mistakes no system can undo afterwards.
How Nebulox proves a payment
- 01
Each invoice gets its own address and amount
- 02
The customer pays
- 03
The payment is detected on-chain
- 04
The status updates by itself
Who it’s for
So Nebulox had to earn the trust of three people
Built from conversations with the ops and product teams of both products.
Decision 01 · The freelancer
Freelancers needed invoices that say exactly what they accept
A freelancer without a website gets paid with an invoice link. They want it quick, but one wrong choice sends their customer the wrong request. So the form had to be fast and hard to get wrong. I tested four versions with colleagues acting as freelancers, our team lead, engineers and PMs, and checked each against four questions:
- Q1Can they finish it?
- Q2Do they understand every field?
- Q3Do they know what their customer will pay?
- Q4Is the invoice what they intended?
Each version is scored on Q1–Q4:✓ yes◐ partly✕ no
05 · Decision 01 · Four tested versions2 / 4
05 · Decision 01 · Four tested versions3 / 4
05 · Decision 01 · Shipped4 / 4
Shipped
V3’s structure, without V4’s jargon or V2’s shortcut
Evidence
I took the test results to the ops team who knew freelancers best. Most freelancers wanted to be paid in fiat and rarely needed to price in a coin.
What I changed
- Fiat only in step 1, for this phase.
- Payment options in their own step: any coin, or one coin and network.
- Expiry set per network in Settings, not guessed in the form.
- Optional fields last, each with a tooltip.
- Kept from V1: the review step before creating.
- Q1 ✓
- Q2 ✓
- Q3 ✓
- Q4 ✓
Decision 02 · The payer
Payers needed to see their payment arrive
Every customer lands on the same checkout, from a freelancer’s link or a business’s website. Many have never paid in crypto before, so I designed it around three rules:
1 · Simple, familiar steps
One decision per screen: pick a coin, pick a network, send.
2 · Hard to get wrong
The wrong network was the most common mistake, and it can’t be undone. So the network gets its own step, with a warning that names the only network that works.
3 · A clear answer
Each invoice has its own address and amount, so Nebulox matches the payment itself. The customer no longer sends a screenshot as proof. The screen updates on its own:
Waiting for paymentConfirmingPaid & confirmed
Decision 03 · The business
Businesses needed to trust Nebulox with their money
A business handing its income to a new provider like Nebulox wants to stay in control. The gateway gives it three options:
Notifications, so it knows when a payment arrives.
A webhook, so its own system knows too.
Automatic withdrawal, so its money doesn’t have to stay in Nebulox.
With so many settings, some were easy to miss. I ran a card sort with both products’ PMs and two ops staff, designed each person’s grouping, and we settled on three tabs: General, Technical and Notifications.
07 · Decision 03 · The result2 / 4
07 · Decision 03 · Automatic withdrawal3 / 4
Then automatic withdrawal broke the books
01The problem
Which business does this withdrawal come out of? A company running several businesses shared one wallet across all its gateways.
02The research
I mapped 14 benchmarked gateways into three models, each with its limits and what it would change in our design.
07 · Decision 03 · The call4 / 4
Three wallet models
Chosen
One business, one wallet
Coinify · Confirmo · BitPay · CoinPayments · NOWPayments · Request
- Limit:
- a company needs one account per business.
- Design:
- no gateway list; per-gateway numbers go.
Many businesses, one wallet
CryptoCloud · Plisio · Cryptomus
- Limit:
- our model. One withdrawal can drain every business’s balance, and income can’t be split by business.
- Design:
- stats can’t be shown at all.
Many businesses, many wallets
CoinGate · BlockBee · CoinRemitter · Radom · Calypso Pay
- Limit:
- the most engineering work.
- Design:
- an account switcher, and every setting changes on switch.
03My recommendation
One business, one wallet, and the team agreed. It was an MVP, time was short, and there was no reason to solve a complexity we didn’t yet know anyone needed.
04Shipping fast
Money was involved, so I agreed with the developers to remove the gateway list for now and leave the redesign for later.
Outcome
Both products stopped checking payments by hand
Both products moved over
The cross-border payment service and the crypto exchange now take crypto payments through Nebulox.
No more screenshot checks
Payments are matched to their invoice automatically. Nobody checks screenshots against wallets by hand anymore.
Ready for outside merchants
The product was feature-complete for external businesses, with a few trial users when I left.
What I can’t show
There’s no before-and-after number: the manual process was never measured, and I’m not going to make one up. What I can point to is the bar set at the start, and that it was met.
Reflection
What I’d do differently
01Show the freelancer what their customer will see
After launch, the team’s feedback pointed to one change in the invoice form: a live preview of the exact checkout, beside the form, updating as the freelancer fills it in. It would replace the review step.
09 · Reflection2 / 2
02Benchmark with a sharper question
I compared about 20 gateways on 35 features; scroll the board to see how far it went. Some of those rows never informed a decision, and starting from the decision would have made the benchmark faster.
03Talk to people outside the company earlier
Almost everything I learned came through the ops and product teams. A few sessions with outside freelancers and developers would have shown whether those patterns held beyond our own products.
Crypto payments were checked by hand. Nebulox made it automatic.
A crypto payment gateway that replaced manual, screenshot-based payment checks for two internal products: a cross-border payment service and a crypto exchange.
TRANSFER · 14:32Sent
250.00 USDT
≈ $250.00
- To
- TQ7x…9fK2
- Network
- TRON (TRC20)
- Tx hash
- 7f3a…c91e
Screenshot ≠ proof
can be incomplete, or fake
- My role
- Product Designer
- Research, testing, UX/UI, design-system components
- Team
- 1 design lead, 2 designers, 1 PM, 6 engineers
- Timeline
- ~1 year
- Zero to launch
- Status
- Shipped, in use
2Internal products migrated
Payment service and crypto exchange
Payment service and crypto exchange
0Payments checked by hand
Matched to their invoice automatically
Matched to their invoice automatically
~1yZero to launch
Ready for external merchants
Ready for external merchants
The problem
Payments were verified by eye
One crypto payment, before Nebulox
Swipe · 8 Ali opens a support ticket to pay in crypto.
Sara types the address and amount into it by hand.
Ali copies the address and guesses the network.
He pays and uploads a screenshot as proof.
Sara compares the screenshot with the wallet by eye.
Tickets pile up, and Ali’s request slips down the queue.
Hours later, Ali still doesn’t know if it arrived.
A wrong network or amount, and the business pays for it.
Discovery
The people doing the checks knew where it broke
The brief came from the business. To see what it didn’t say, I spent time with the product managers of both products and with the ops team who checked payments every day.
Screenshots can be incomplete, or fake
Miss one ticket and the customer waits
Our mistakes cost money too
The ops team who checked payments every day · quotes are paraphrased summaries
The insight
The hard part wasn’t sending crypto. It was proving it arrived.
Nebulox had to prove payments on its own, and help people avoid the mistakes no system can undo afterwards.
How Nebulox proves a payment
01Each invoice gets its own address and amount
02The customer pays
03The payment is detected on-chain
04The status updates by itself
Invoice list: statuses change on their own from Pending to Partial, Paid or Expired.
Who it’s for
So Nebulox had to earn the trust of three people
Three people, three questions
Swipe · 3 The freelancer
Has no website. Sends an invoice link to get paid.
“How do I ask for crypto without getting it wrong?”
Invoice form · Decision 01
The payer
Often paying a business in crypto for the first time. Never creates an account.
“Will my payment arrive safely?”
Payment screen · Decision 02
The business
Connects its site to Nebulox and runs on what the panel reports.
“Can I trust Nebulox with my money?”
Gateway settings · Decision 03Built from conversations with the ops and product teams of both products.
Decision 01 · The freelancer
Freelancers needed invoices that say exactly what they accept
A freelancer without a website gets paid with an invoice link. One wrong choice sends their customer the wrong request, so the form had to be fast and hard to get wrong. I tested four versions with colleagues acting as freelancers, our team lead, engineers and PMs, against four questions:
Q1Can they finish it?
Q2Do they understand every field?
Q3Do they know what their customer will pay?
Q4Is the invoice what they intended?
Four tested versions
Swipe · 4✓ yes◐ partly✕ no
Version 1
Everything on one page
Q1✕Q2✕Q3✓Q4◐
What broke
- One long page.
- Order ID unclear.
- The invoice could expire before the payment confirmed.
- An optional field took the most space.
- “Order title” and “From” unclear.
Version 2
Simpler, by merging two decisions
Q1✓Q2◐Q3✕Q4◐
What I changed
- Help text for Order ID.
- A hint inside the From field.
- Description no longer first.
- Price currency and accepted coin merged into one field.
What broke
- Couldn’t price in dollars and be paid in one specific coin.
- Dollars, euros and every coin mixed in one long dropdown.
- Picking USD silently meant “any coin”.
Version 3
The two decisions apart again
Q1✓Q2◐Q3✓Q4◐
What I changed
- Two steps instead of one page.
- Step 1: price in dollars or euros only.
- Step 2: how the customer pays, any coin or one specific coin.
5 of 5 testers preferred it to V1.
What broke
- “From” and “Order ID” still unclear.
- No way to price in crypto.
- Expiry set before choosing the network.
Version 4
Invoicing in crypto, too
Q1◐Q2◐Q3✕Q4◐
What I changed
- A Fiat / Crypto choice at the top, so prices could be set in crypto.
- “Order title” renamed to “Item name”.
- “Visible to your customers” under the fields the customer sees.
What broke
- Most testers didn’t notice the Fiat / Crypto choice.
- Those who did couldn’t tell Fiat from Crypto.
- Fiat once again meant “any coin”.
- Back to one long page.
Shipped
V3’s structure, without V4’s jargon or V2’s shortcut
Prototype: create an invoice in three steps, review it, and share the link
Evidence
I took the test results to the ops team who knew freelancers best. Most freelancers wanted to be paid in fiat and rarely needed to price in a coin.
What I changed
- Fiat only in step 1, for this phase.
- Payment options in their own step: any coin, or one coin and network.
- Expiry set per network in Settings, not guessed in the form.
- Optional fields last, each with a tooltip.
- Kept from V1: the review step before creating.
Q1✓Q2✓Q3✓Q4✓
Decision 02 · The payer
Payers needed to see their payment arrive
Every customer lands on the same checkout, from a freelancer’s link or a business’s website. Many have never paid in crypto before, so I designed it around three rules:
1
Simple, familiar steps
One decision per screen: pick a coin, pick a network, send.
2
Hard to get wrong
The wrong network was the most common mistake, and it can’t be undone. So the network gets its own step, with a warning that names the only network that works.
3
A clear answer
Each invoice has its own address and amount, so Nebulox matches the payment itself. The customer no longer sends a screenshot as proof.
Waiting for paymentConfirmingPaid & confirmed
Checkout prototype: coin, network, send, then confirming and paid.
Decision 03 · The business
Businesses needed to trust Nebulox with their money
A business handing its income to a new provider wants to stay in control. The gateway gives it three options:
Notifications, so it knows when a payment arrives.
A webhook, so its own system knows too.
Automatic withdrawal, so its money doesn’t have to stay in Nebulox.
With so many settings, some were easy to miss. I ran a card sort with both products’ PMs and two ops staff, designed each person’s grouping, and we settled on three tabs: General, Technical and Notifications.
Card sort
Swipe · 4 The result: three tabs, General, Technical and Notifications
Then automatic withdrawal broke the books
01The problem
Which business does this withdrawal come out of? A company running several businesses shared one wallet across all its gateways.
02The research
I mapped 14 benchmarked gateways into three models, each with its limits and what it would change in our design.
Gateways grouped by model (top), and what each would change in our design (bottom)
Three wallet models
Swipe · 3Chosen
One business, one wallet
Coinify · Confirmo · BitPay · CoinPayments · NOWPayments · Request
- Limit:
- a company needs one account per business.
- Design:
- no gateway list; per-gateway numbers go.
Many businesses, one wallet
CryptoCloud · Plisio · Cryptomus
- Limit:
- our model. One withdrawal can drain every business’s balance, and income can’t be split by business.
- Design:
- stats can’t be shown at all.
Many businesses, many wallets
CoinGate · BlockBee · CoinRemitter · Radom · Calypso Pay
- Limit:
- the most engineering work.
- Design:
- an account switcher, and every setting changes on switch.
03My recommendation
One business, one wallet, and the team agreed. It was an MVP, time was short, and there was no reason to solve a complexity we didn’t yet know anyone needed.
04Shipping fast
Money was involved, so I agreed with the developers to remove the gateway list for now and leave the redesign for later.
Outcome
Both products stopped checking payments by hand
Both products moved over
The cross-border payment service and the crypto exchange now take crypto payments through Nebulox.
No more screenshot checks
Payments are matched to their invoice automatically. Nobody checks screenshots against wallets by hand anymore.
Ready for outside merchants
The product was feature-complete for external businesses, with a few trial users when I left.
Reflection
What I’d do differently
01Show the freelancer what their customer will see
After launch, the team’s feedback pointed to one change in the invoice form: a live preview of the exact checkout, beside the form, updating as the freelancer fills it in. It would replace the review step.
02Benchmark with a sharper question
I compared about 20 gateways on 35 features. Some of those rows never informed a decision, and starting from the decision would have made the benchmark faster.
Scroll inside the board 03Talk to people outside the company earlier
Almost everything I learned came through the ops and product teams. A few sessions with outside freelancers and developers would have shown whether those patterns held beyond our own products.