Kixy; Designing the Future of Social Fintech
Company: Kixy
Role: Product Designer
Duration: 3 years
Platforms: iOS, Android, Web (Personal & Business)
Team: Cross-functional (Product, Engineering, Marketing, Compliance, Design)
Contribution: UX/UI Design, Flows, Design System, Visual Design, Website, Feature Implementation
The Challenge
Kixy set out to become the first true social banking platform; a digital-first financial service blending banking features with seamless peer-to-peer interaction. The challenge: design an intuitive experience that feels as friendly as messaging, yet as reliable as traditional banking, supporting multi-currency accounts, borderless debit cards, and social money actions.
My Role
As a Product Designer at Kixy for nearly 3 years, I worked across both mobile (iOS/Android) and web applications for personal and business users. I collaborated closely with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to translate requirements into seamless user experiences.
Key responsibilities included:
- UX & UI Design: Led the end-to-end design of core fintech features including onboarding, multi-currency wallets, borderless debit card setup, chat-driven payment flows, and business tools.
- "Kixy It" Feature Development: Designed intuitive flows for Send, Split, and Request money actions, integrating them tightly into the app’s messaging system with reactions and confirmations.
- Design System: After the first year, I co-led the development of a robust, scalable design system to support cross-platform consistency. I worked closely with the growing design team; including a visual designer, motion designer, and two additional product designers—to expand and maintain it.
- Prototyping & Testing: Created high-fidelity prototypes for regular user testing, validated assumptions with feedback loops, and iterated rapidly based on insights.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Actively participated in design critiques, sprint planning, and daily standups, ensuring tight communication across engineering and product teams.
As the team scaled, I contributed to onboarding new designers, documented system standards, and helped shape the evolving product experience that combined social interaction with secure, reliable fintech functionality.
Problem
How do we combine financial utility with social features; without making it feel cluttered, untrustworthy, or too casual?
We needed to strike the right balance between emotion and function, while maintaining a high standard of clarity, compliance, and user confidence.
Discovery
The discovery phase began with understanding how users perceive social features in a financial context; a relatively new and sensitive space. The core challenge was blending utility with interaction in a way that felt both secure and engaging.
We conducted:
- User Interviews with early adopters and potential users to identify pain points in existing money transfer apps and gauge comfort levels with chat-based financial actions.
- Competitor Analysis across both fintech and social platforms to benchmark features like transaction flows, social reactions, and account management.
- Stakeholder Workshops to align on product goals, compliance boundaries, and market opportunities.
- Persona Development based on qualitative insights; creating profiles for personal users (e.g., students, freelancers) and business users (e.g., small entrepreneurs sending cross-border payments).
- Journey Mapping to visualize emotional highs and lows across user flows, especially around sensitive actions like sending or requesting money.
These insights guided us to create a unified experience that didn’t just include social features; it made them feel native and useful, not gimmicky. The idea of "Kixy It" was born here, rooted in the feedback that users wanted money movement to be fast, emotional, and intuitive; like sending a message.
Architecture
As the Kixy platform evolved, we needed a scalable design and technical architecture to support both personal and business banking across mobile and web. The architecture planning involved close collaboration with product managers, developers, and stakeholders to define a modular and flexible system.
We broke down core user journeys (onboarding, money transfer, account management, etc.) into reusable components, enabling us to scale the product quickly and maintain consistency. We defined interface architecture using clear information hierarchy and intuitive navigation models suited for fintech needs including secure access, transaction flows, and financial insights.
From a design standpoint, we used atomic design principles to structure components, pages, and templates that were integrated with our design system. These architectural decisions supported faster prototyping, consistent visual language, and better developer handoff.
This foundational architecture ensured seamless integration between features like "Kixy it" (send, split, request money), account management, transaction history, and social chat functionality; giving users a unified and smooth experience across the platform.
Design Solutions
We approached the product holistically; balancing financial security, UX clarity, and social delight. Key solutions spanned multiple features across both personal and business user journeys.
1. Kixy It – The Social Finance Engine
- Unified Send, Split, and Request under one simple action.
- Designed a conversation-style interaction post-transaction, with emojis, reactions, and in-app prompts.
- Built trust through live status updates in the chat thread (e.g. “Payment received”, “Pending”, etc.).
- Enabled users to create a money moment, not just a transaction.
2. Multi-Currency Account UX
- Designed clear currency selection and balance views.
- Used color-coded wallets and flags for currency distinction.
- Simplified FX rate display with visual indicators for conversion cost.
- Added contextual tips for new users on how to manage and convert currencies safely.
3. Business Dashboard Features
- Streamlined dashboard for viewing balances across currencies.
- Transaction tagging system to help small businesses categorize expenses.
- Designed simple invoice-to-payment flow for freelancers.
- Enabled team permissions (e.g. finance team, admin) through intuitive role management UI.
4. Borderless Debit Card Activation Flow
- Created a guided step-by-step activation journey, reducing drop-offs.
- Added real-time progress tracking for card shipping, identity verification, and activation.
- Integrated visual cues to indicate card status (active, blocked, pending).
5. Smart Onboarding
- Built personalized onboarding journeys:
- For personal users: focus on KYC, funding account, and trying Kixy It
- For business users: guided through setting up currency wallets and team roles
- Added a “Skip and Explore” mode for app testers and investors
6. Notification & Alert System
- Contextual and non-intrusive alerts for payment success, low balance, rate changes
- Visual hierarchy ensured primary actions were clear and timely
- Integrated seamlessly into the Kixy chat and transaction feed
Each solution was grounded in user feedback and tested with real scenarios. Together, these features created a platform that felt both powerful and human — serious about money, but fun to use.
Wireframing
We began with low-fidelity wireframes to explore navigation patterns, information hierarchy, and social-fintech interaction models without visual distraction. These early explorations helped us quickly test ideas with stakeholders and users across personal and business segments.
Some of the key wireframing highlights included:
- "Kixy It" Interaction Flow:
Mapped out separate wireframes for Send, Split, and Request money, with branching paths based on whether the recipient was in the user’s contacts, new, or a group chat. We also included wireframes for follow-up actions like in-app reactions and message confirmations.
- Multi-Currency Wallets:
Explored different ways to display multiple currencies in one dashboard, landing on a horizontal swipe and expandable list model for compact clarity. Each wireframe iteration aimed to balance clarity with quick access to FX conversion.
- Personal vs. Business Dashboards:
Created two wireframe sets — one with a clean transaction feed for personal accounts, and another with business-specific tools like expense tagging, role management, and simplified invoicing.
- Onboarding and KYC:
Designed a modular onboarding experience for both user types, wireframed for optional steps (like linking external bank accounts or uploading business docs) to reduce friction.
- Borderless Debit Card Setup:
Wireframes broke the journey into intuitive stages: request, ship tracking, ID verification, and activation — each visually guided.
- Social Chat & Notifications:
Explored embedded payment messages in chat threads, interactive buttons (e.g. “Split this?”, “React”), and passive alerts like FX rate nudges and balance warnings.
We validated the wireframes with quick guerrilla tests and stakeholder reviews before progressing to high-fidelity design. This wireframing stage was critical in shaping the core architecture and defining interaction expectations for both mobile and web.
Prototyping
We developed interactive prototypes using Figma:
- High-fidelity flows mimicked real interactions on iOS/Android
- Prototypes used for stakeholder reviews, onboarding tests, and investor demos
- Also embedded in design documentation for dev handoff
User Testing
Regular remote and in-person usability tests with 6–8 participants per sprint:
- Observed hesitation points in flow
- Validated iconography, CTA labeling, and messaging
- Iterated based on findings (e.g., replacing “Split It” with “Split Bill” for clarity)
- Also ran A/B tests on social reactions UI placement
Design System
As the product matured, I led the development of a shared design system in Figma:
- Tokens: spacing, color palette, typography scale
- Components: buttons, tabs, cards, modals, alerts, input states
- Cross-platform: ensured parity across iOS and Android while respecting platform conventions
- Documentation: maintained specs and usage guidelines to support new designers and dev team
- Contributed to accessibility standards: contrast, text sizing, focus states
The system allowed our growing team to stay consistent, speed up prototyping, and ensure visual alignment across features and platforms.
Impact
- Boosted feature usage (Kixy It) by 40% in first 2 months
- Reduced user confusion during money transfers by 30% (support tickets drop)
- Accelerated new feature development thanks to reusable components
- Strengthened Kixy’s brand as a trustworthy but expressive fintech product
Final Design
After several rounds of iteration, testing, and stakeholder input, we translated our validated wireframes and design system into polished user interfaces for both mobile and web platforms. The final designs reflect Kixy's vibrant, social-first identity while maintaining clarity, accessibility, and trust; key for a Fintech product. Each screen was crafted with attention to detail, ensuring consistency, responsiveness, and a seamless experience across personal and business use cases. The "Kixy It" features; Send, Split, and Request, were visually prioritized to highlight their unique social finance functionality, and subtle motion was added to reinforce interactions and guide user flow.
Results & Learnings
The launch of the new Kixy mobile and web apps, along with the refreshed business experience and unified design system, marked a significant step forward in delivering a seamless and delightful user journey.
Key Outcomes:
- User Engagement: After launch, user session duration increased by 35%, indicating improved engagement with core features like Kixy it (Send, Split, Request).
- Task Completion Rate: Usability testing and live product analytics showed a 42% improvement in task completion (especially for onboarding and money transfer flows).
- Design Consistency: Our design system ensured cohesive UI across iOS, Android, and web, reducing dev/design inconsistencies and speeding up implementation.
- Growth & Expansion: As the product matured, the team scaled efficiently. New product designers were onboarded faster thanks to clear documentation and reusable components.
- Collaboration: Working closely with PMs, engineers, and stakeholders, we created a shared understanding of product goals. Feedback loops were faster and more actionable.
What I Learned:
Building for fintech requires a balance between user delight and trust — design must feel modern but credible.
- Adding social features to a financial product needs thoughtful UX to avoid distraction and preserve clarity.
- Early prototyping, clear design tokens, and active user testing dramatically reduce late-stage revisions.
- A flexible but solid design system is essential when growing a team and product rapidly.
Overall, the experience strengthened my ability to design strategically at scale, collaborate cross-functionally, and make decisions grounded in both user needs and business priorities.
