case study 04

Embedded finance Concept · live demo
GOPAY
fintech built for the high street

Live demo · sample businesses

Get paid. Bank it. Grow it. All from the till.

Try the GoPay demo
RoleProduct, design and build
TimelineOctober 2026
PlatformWeb app: landing, business portal, admin
StatusWorking concept on demo data
GoPay landing page: Get paid. Bank it. Grow it.
the promise on the front door
01 the problem

The till knows everything. The owner still juggles five apps.

A café owner on a UK high street takes payments on one device, banks somewhere else, chases a loan with a third provider, buys insurance from a broker and pays an accountant to re-type it all for VAT. Every one of those already depends on the same thing: what went through the till.

Tools like Epos Now made the till smart. The money side around it is still scattered, and small businesses pay for that in time, fees and missed warnings.

So the brief: start from the till, and build the bank account, funding, cover and books on top of the sales data it already has.

GoPay business portal home with balance, take a payment, funding offer and GoPay AI
the owner's morning: takings, balance, a funding offer and one AI tip (demo data)
02 key decisions

Six calls that shaped the product

1

Finance lives next to the till

Banking, Funding, Insurance and Accounting sit in the same sidebar as Till and Stock. Money from card sales settles into a GoPay account with its own sort code, cards and Faster Payments.

2

Underwrite on sales, not paperwork

Funding offers come from 30 days of card takings: one fixed fee, no interest, repaid as a share of future card sales. Nothing changes until the owner accepts.

3

Books written as you trade

Every sale, refund and payout posts to a double-entry ledger, so profit and loss, VAT for Making Tax Digital and bank matching are ready without an export. QuickBooks sync is there for owners who already use it.

4

AI that points at a next step

GoPay AI reads sales, stock, money and books, and each insight ends with one action: pin a product, move a shift, set money aside for VAT. It suggests; the owner decides.

5

Every staff member gets the right door

Owners, managers, cashiers and accountants sign in with their own PIN. A cashier sees the till and cash-up, never the bank balance; a manager can send up to £1,000 and no more.

6

One platform, many businesses

Each café, pub, florist or barber is its own tenant. The admin portal handles onboarding and Companies House checks, lending, insurance and platform roles for the GoPay team.

03 the AI adviser

Insights a busy owner can act on before opening

Most dashboards show charts and leave the thinking to the owner. GoPay AI turns the same data into short, plain-English cards, each with the evidence and one thing to do.

In the demo café it spots that fresh orange juice is up 28% in a week, that the rush is 8 to 9am while a shift sits idle at 5pm, that shortbread runs out in two days, and that staff are on payroll without employers' liability cover.

Owners can also just ask: "How am I doing today?", "Can I get funding?", "Am I insured?"

GoPay AI recommendations page
every insight ends in an action
04 embedded accounting

No month-end scramble

Because the till, the bank account and the ledger are one system, the accounting view is always current: profit and loss, VAT owed for the quarter, bank reconciliation, the full ledger and a trial balance that has to match to the penny. Refunds reverse the books and put items back into stock in the same step.

GoPay accounting page with profit and loss for the last 30 days
profit and loss built from the till, not from a spreadsheet (demo data)
05 what's in it

Three surfaces, one platform

WhoWhat they get
Business ownersTill, payments and payment links, stock, cash-up with Z reports, banking and cards, funding, insurance, accounting, GoPay AI, integrations
StaffTheir own PIN sign-in and only the screens their role allows, with every action in an activity log
The GoPay teamTenants, onboarding and Companies House checks, lending and insurance books, access roles, system health
ProspectsA landing page with pricing, finance products and a live demo
GoPay banking page with balance, statement, cards and send money
a business account the till pays straight into
GoPay admin portal access and roles page
who can do what, for every business and for the GoPay team
06 how I'd measure it

Activation is the first payment, retention is the first finance product

GoPay is a concept running on sample businesses, so these are targets, not results.

  • Activation: a new business takes its first card payment within a day of signing up. Signups stuck in onboarding checks are the first-mile leak to fix.
  • Depth: share of businesses using at least one product beyond the till, such as the account, funding or cover. That's where the revenue and the switching cost are.
  • Guardrail: funding repaid on schedule, and AI suggestions owners act on rather than dismiss.
07 how it was built

Built with an AI agent, judged by me

I built GoPay with an AI coding agent. I made the product calls: which finance products sit beside the till, how funding is priced, what each staff role can and can't see, and how the AI should phrase advice. The front end and back end are one web app with a real API, staff permissions checked on the server for every request, and books that must balance.

It's a concept: no real money moves, and the lending, insurance and banking partners are simulated.

08 what's next

From concept to pilot

  • A real database, so each demo business keeps its data between visits.
  • Live card payments and a banking partner, then QuickBooks and Xero sync with real accounts.
  • A pilot with a handful of independent cafés and pubs to test onboarding and the first funding offer.
09 what I took away

"The best place to sell a small business finance is the screen they already open fifty times a day."

Let's talk

Got a product, a hard problem, or just want to say hi? Send it over. I read every message.

G

George Odiana

Open to product roles, side-project collaborations and good conversations about hard product problems.

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