Case Study 02 — Classifieds / Marketplace / Fintech
Transactional Marketplace with Payments & Delivery
Led the product strategy and execution to turn a major SA classifieds platform from a place where people listed things into a place where they bought and sold them — safely, with payment protection and delivery built in.
The Challenge
The platform had the audience. Tens of millions of monthly active users were already finding things they wanted to buy. But the moment of transaction happened off-platform — over WhatsApp, cash in hand, and blind trust. Fraud was rife. Disputes had nowhere to go. The platform bore the reputational cost but captured none of the transaction value. The opportunity was enormous. So was the risk of getting it wrong at scale.
The Approach
- 01Started with research, not requirements — months of Jobs-to-be-Done work to understand what buyers, sellers, and automotive users actually needed vs. what they said they needed
- 02Benchmarked 12+ global transactional marketplaces to understand what good looks like and where the real design decisions live
- 03Structured the work across three squads with clear ownership, then built alignment on a shared direction — because the org challenge was as real as the product one
- 04Planned in quarters, not years — OKRs that kept the work grounded in measurable outcomes rather than feature roadmaps
SafePay — Buyer Protection
- Escrow-based payments that held funds until delivery confirmed — shifting the trust dynamic completely
- Multiple payment methods at checkout, including BNPL for bigger-ticket purchases
- Flexible delivery options: door-to-door courier, parcel lockers, or in-person handover
- A 48-hour dispute window that gave buyers real recourse without freezing sellers unfairly
Seller Tools
- A professional seller storefront that replaced a sunsetting third-party product — owned, integrated, built to last
- AI-assisted listing tools that made high-volume selling manageable without sacrificing quality
- A dedicated dealer portal for automotive — because selling a car is not the same as selling a second-hand couch
- Search improvements grounded in real data, not gut feel — category-level ranking gaps identified and addressed
Outcomes
- The platform could now facilitate transactions, not just listings — a fundamental shift in its commercial model
- Buyer protection launched for the first time in the platform's history — SafePay gave users a reason to transact on-platform
- Seller tools replaced legacy third-party products with something native, coherent, and actually designed for this context
- Squad accountability matured — teams knew what they owned, what success looked like, and how to measure it
Key Takeaway
You can't build your way to marketplace trust — you have to design for it. That means owning the transaction, protecting both sides, and earning credibility with users before you claim it in the press release.
Customer name withheld by agreement.
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