Design demo. Every screen here is a static mockup — nothing is connected to a payment system, and no control does anything. Names, balances, account numbers and references are invented for review. The rate shown (¥1 ≈ ₵1.76) is illustrative, not quoted.
Corridor 04 · 14 screens · Browser portal
A cocoa exporter in Accra sells 120 MT to a buyer in Qingdao. The money sits in escrow against shipping documents, then crosses between two banking systems over CIPS. These are the screens for the whole of it — onboarding the business, agreeing what releases the money, and naming every place the payment can stop.
Flow A
A trade account belongs to a registered entity, not to a person with a phone. Registration, ownership and exposure come before any settlement screen exists.
Everything downstream — the escrow facility limit, the purpose code, the export documents that release money — hangs off what is captured here.
A business account starts from the Registrar-General filing, not from whoever opened it. The RGD number and TIN are captured first because every later check — ownership, sector, export licence — hangs off the registered entity, and the two records have to name the same company.
| Beneficial owner | Ghana Card | Holding | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nana Adjei Director |
GHA-220148873-9 | 45% | Verified |
| Efua Adjei Director |
GHA-661209384-2 | 35% | Verified |
| Samuel Ofori Shareholder |
GHA-449120837-4 | 20% | Awaiting ID |
Ownership is a table because it has to total 100% and be read line by line. One owner still awaiting ID does not block trading — it caps the facility, and the screen says so against that owner rather than reducing the whole business to a single amber word.
| Trade | Counterparty | Status | Amount ₵ |
|---|---|---|---|
| TS-4471 | Qingdao Foods Import | Released | 400,000.00 |
| TS-4468 | Ningbo Cocoa Processing | In escrow | 292,000.00 |
| TS-4462 | Qingdao Foods Import | CIPS in flight | 150,000.00 |
Escrow exposure leads, because it is the constraint on the next trade: ₵842,000 of a ₵2.0M facility is already committed before the trader opens the settlements list. Counts of open trades sit underneath, where they belong.
Flow B
Escrow only works if both parties agreed in advance what releases the money, and if every cedi held can be traced to the trade that put it there. Six screens for one container of cocoa.
Contract ACT-QD-2026-118. The buyer pays ¥227,272.73, the seller receives ₵400,000.00, and ₵398,340.00 lands after fees. The shipment left Tema on 19 September aboard MV Adwoa.
Release conditions sit on the creation screen, beside the amounts, while both parties still agree. Deciding what evidence releases the money is the entire point of escrow; leaving it until the seller wants paying turns a rule into a negotiation.
One trade, two currencies, side by side. The seller’s ₵400,000 is not what the seller gets: fees are itemised and the net figure is stated, because ₵398,340.00 is the number that turns up in the bank account.
| Date | Movement | In / out ₵ | Balance ₵ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Sep | Opening balance TS-4455 | — | 318,000.00 |
| 08 Sep | Deposit received TS-4468 | +292,000.00 | 610,000.00 |
| 12 Sep | Deposit received TS-4462 | +150,000.00 | 760,000.00 |
| 15 Sep | Released to seller TS-4455 | −318,000.00 | 442,000.00 |
| 18 Sep | Deposit received TS-4471 | +400,000.00 | 842,000.00 |
Escrow is a ledger, not a balance. Every movement in and out carries the trade reference that caused it and a running balance, so the ₵842,000 held reconciles line by line to the three trades holding it — escrow that cannot be traced that way is just a pooled account.
The buyer’s funding leg has four distinct places the money can sit between instruction and escrow. Naming them separately means a seller asking whether to load the container gets an answer, rather than the word “pending”.
| Required document | Received | Check |
|---|---|---|
| Bill of lading MV ADWOA / ACT-118 | 19 Sep | Matches |
| Phytosanitary certificate Ghana Standards Authority | 19 Sep | Matches |
| Commercial invoice ACT-QD-2026-118 | 17 Sep | Matches |
Documents are checked against the conditions agreed at creation, not against a list assembled now. The challenge window and the exact auto-release date appear on the same screen, because a buyer who does nothing is agreeing to release on 28 September and should not learn that afterwards.
Both parties get their own side of the same event. Telling the seller what landed and leaving the buyer to reconstruct what happened to their yuan from a bank statement is how a settled trade becomes a dispute a week later.
Flow C
Money crossing between two banking systems passes through four institutions. When it stops, the trader needs to know which one it stopped at and what to do about it.
Five named stages rather than one status word, a rejection code paired with its plain-English meaning, and a receipt that carries both references — because support, customs and the buyer’s bank each ask for a different one.
Five named stages, because “processing” covers four different places the money can be sitting. A trader chasing a payment needs to know whether to ring their own bank, the beneficiary bank, or nobody at all.
AC04 on its own tells a trader nothing and costs them a phone call to their bank for a translation. The code, its plain-English meaning, the institution that reported it and the corrective action appear together — along with where the ¥52,840 went, which is the first thing anyone asks.
The confirmation names both references. Support will ask for the escrow reference and the buyer’s bank will ask for the CIPS one, so neither is treated as the single identifier for the trade.
The artefact the trade leaves behind. Contract, goods, shipment, both currencies and both references on one page, because this is the document that gets attached to an email, filed with customs or handed to an auditor two years later.
| Trade | Counterparty | Status | Amount ₵ |
|---|---|---|---|
| TS-4471 | Qingdao Foods Import | Released 20 Sep | 400,000.00 |
| TS-4468 | Ningbo Cocoa Processing | In escrow | 292,000.00 |
| TS-4462 | Qingdao Foods Import | CIPS in flight | 150,000.00 |
| TS-4459 | Ningbo Cocoa Processing | Rejected AC04 | 93,000.00 |
| TS-4455 | Qingdao Foods Import | Released 15 Sep | 318,000.00 |
Status is specific rather than tidy. “In escrow”, “CIPS in flight” and “released” are three different places money sits, and a single word like “pending” would cover all three while telling the trader nothing about which of them they can spend.