Problem And Solution¶
The Problem¶
African import merchants often need to pay suppliers across difficult corridors where the cheapest, fastest, or most reliable route is not obvious.
For a Nigeria-to-China supplier payment, a merchant or operator may need to compare:
- Direct bank transfer routes
- USD routes
- Stablecoin routes such as USDT or USDC
- OTC or P2P liquidity routes
- Manual China-side settlement routes
- Trade-agent or counterparty-assisted payout paths
The hard part is not just finding a route. The hard part is deciding which route is lawful, available, priced correctly, liquid enough, trusted enough, and evidence-backed enough for the operator to recommend.
What FlowClaw Solves¶
FlowClaw helps an operator answer one question:
For this merchant, this amount, this corridor, and this supplier settlement need, what route should we recommend, and what proof do we have?
It does this by combining route generation, provider metadata, corridor restrictions, policy checks, quote evidence, manual proof, controlled route evidence, and audit history.
Product Scope¶
FlowClaw focuses on route intelligence, operator review, proof collection, and evidence-backed route decisions. Payment rails, provider accounts, and settlement execution remain controlled by the merchant, operator, or configured provider flow.
Who It Is For¶
| User | Their pain | What FlowClaw gives them |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant Client | "I need to pay a supplier and need guidance on the safest or cheapest route." | A clear recommendation, merchant-safe explanation, and required actions. |
| Desk Operator | "I need to compare the route I would use against the system recommendation." | Pilot cases, manual route capture, quote evidence, proof evidence, and outcome scoring. |
| Platform Admin | "I need to supervise route quality, operator controls, and evidence." | Governance views, readiness decisions, controlled review records, and audit evidence. |
| Settlement Agent | "I am assigned one settlement leg and must submit proof." | A limited proof submission surface, without route approval or policy bypass power. |
How The System Solves It¶
1. Capture payment intent. The merchant or operator enters amount, source currency, destination currency, corridor, and execution mode.
2. Generate candidate routes. The route engine builds possible provider and currency paths using the configured provider graph and corridor model.
3. Score route reality. The engine considers estimated cost, latency, liquidity confidence, provider risk, trust score, manual execution penalty, evidence freshness, and proof needs.
4. Apply policy. OPA/Rego denies routes that break cost, risk, hop, or provider verification rules.
5. Store a recommendation. The API stores the winning route, alternatives, denials, policy details, and audit context.
6. Mark human-required steps clearly. Manual, hybrid, or external-counterparty steps require proof, confirmation, and operator review before they are treated as complete.
7. Improve decisions with evidence. Operators compare FlowClaw output against case history, live quotes, proof records, and outcomes so route decisions become more reliable over time.
Technical Capabilities¶
| Capability | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| FastAPI Control API | Gives the portals one backend surface for auth, sessions, route cases, evidence, artifacts, runtime, and governance. |
| Route graph engine | Lets FlowClaw compare multi-hop route candidates instead of hardcoding one provider path. |
| Provider and corridor catalog | Keeps route recommendations anchored to known providers, rails, manual actors, and corridor constraints. |
| OPA/Rego policy | Makes allow/deny decisions explicit instead of hidden in UI logic. |
| Tenant and role model | Keeps Platform Admin, Desk Operator, Merchant Client, and Settlement Agent views separated. |
| Proof-gated execution | Prevents manual settlement steps from pretending to be automatic. |
| Route evidence tables | Captures manual route, FlowClaw recommendation, quotes, proof, outcome, quality flags, and readiness decisions. |
| Merchant-safe API | Shows only safe assigned pilot case fields to merchants. |
| Audit events | Records route, approval, manual step, readiness, and proof events for review. |
| Controlled route review | Supports supervised route checks only when required evidence is present. |
Primary Corridor¶
FlowClaw is anchored on Nigeria-to-China import payment routing because that corridor has enough currency, provider, liquidity, proof, and operator complexity to show the value of route intelligence.
The same model can extend to other corridors, but the public product story starts with a focused supplier-payment workflow.
What Readers Can Use These Docs For¶
- Merchants can understand the route request and recommendation flow.
- Operators can understand each control-console panel and evidence workflow.
- Admins can understand tenant controls, governance views, and auditability.
- Developers can understand the API groups and role model.