15 Minutes with Crowdr’s Engineering Lead, Daniel Arikawe

You may have seen that we recently launched our international donations feature on Crowdr, powered by Paystack and Apple Pay.

What you didn’t see, though, is the countless hours of thinking and implementation that went into this. We spent 15 minutes with the man behind it all — Crowdr’s engineering lead Daniel Arikawe to find out what makes him tick and how exactly this game-changing feature came to be.

He also shared hints on some exciting improvements coming soon!

Before we dive into the technical bits, let's get to know you!

Hi, my name is Daniel, and I'm the engineering lead at Crowdr. I'm passionate about using technology to improve the lives of people and that's exactly what we're doing at Crowdr.

Outside work, I enjoy books and movies. Sleeping too, if that counts.

If your job had a warning label, what would it say?

Hmm, it would probably be that I'd have to constantly be on my laptop. You know, there's always something to fix or improve. Always!

If you could go back and whisper one piece of advice to yourself before you started our international payments implementation, what would it be?

Honestly, I'd probably tell myself to just start with the Apple Pay route rather than the more complex options we initially explored.

We went for those more complex options because we wanted to capture all users at once. We faced many roadblocks pursuing those options and it slowed us down.

Why and how did you eventually decide on Apple Pay?

One key metric that pointed us in the Apple Pay direction was that a majority of users were accessing Crowdr from their mobile devices and they were using iPhones.

Another thing was the fact that it provides a swift, secure, and seamless experience. Anyone who uses Apple Pay for day-to-day transactions will tell you as much.

How long did it take to actually implement international donations on Crowdr?

Right from jump, international payments was something Crowdr always wanted to do.

However, the actual work started around the beginning of this year. So, from research to the time the feature went live, it took us five months.

What were the challenges your team faced and how many times did you have to go back to the drawing board?

The first major challenge was setting up a domiciliary account, which we eventually had to set aside.

We realized we could bypass the need for one if international donations were going into our Naira accounts and not our foreign accounts. It's something that we will revisit, much later.

We went back to the drawing board countless times before we were finally able to put all the missing pieces together and decide on Apple Pay.

Was there a moment during the Apple Pay implementation that made you think, “This might not work,” and how did you push through?

Surprisingly, implementation was easier than we expected.

Our initial concern, especially with the other alternatives we considered earlier, was the lengthy, semi-manual currency conversion we would have to do.

However, once we realized Apple Pay offered automatic currency conversion, the rest was easy.

From your perspective, how does enabling international donations change the game for someone raising funds from Nigeria for a personal cause or community project?

I think it opens up more opportunities for Nigerian fundraisers to benefit from the global community.

With the goodwill of diasporans, Nigerian fundraisers will be able to raise more money, especially when you consider how strong some of these foreign currencies are. Take the pound for instance — one pound is worth about 2,000 Naira.

It also means fundraising goals can be reached a lot faster than before.

If a crowdfunder was sitting across from you right now, what would you want to tell them about what this feature means — not in tech-speak, but in human terms?

I'd let them know that this new feature not only expands the reach of their campaigns, but the reach of their community.

So whether they are raising money for personal or social projects, it's an opportunity to build a stronger network of friends and supporters.

Now that this milestone is complete, what's next for Crowdr?

We are always looking for ways to improve our service at Crowdr, so yeah, there's a lot more to do.

At the moment we're collecting feedback from early users of the Apple Pay feature to identify areas of improvement.

However, the next thing we want to do is integrate Google Pay into Crowdr. It's important that we bring international donations to Android users as quickly as possible.

On Crowdr, distance is not a barrier to supporting the causes you care about. Try donating in your local currency and any campaign of your choice today!