THE BACKGROUND

Behind the Vision

The project was built by a small, cross-country team of designers, engineers, and product managers united to make payments and communication effortless, connecting everyone, everywhere.

Roles and Responsibilities

As part of payment team, I brought my background in payment design and systems thinking to bridge the gap between product vision and user experience. My experience working with payment infrastructures allowed me to contribute to discussions on transaction flows, trust, and compliance, ensuring the product was not only visually seamless but also financially reliable, scalable, and secure.

As the product designer, I led end-to-end design across multiple domains, including chat and payments, while collaborating with the product design team to build a unified design system across iOS, Android, and desktop. These efforts improved design consistency and development efficiency, and also delivered measurable business value by enhancing user engagement, increasing payment success rates, and creating a scalable foundation for future growth.

THE CHALLENGE & APPROACH

From Challenge to Clarity

Working within a fast-paced startup environment came with several challenges. Timelines were often tight, requiring quick iterations and efficient collaboration across time zones. The existing app also carried legacy design and payment limitations, which added constraints to the overall user experience.

Working Approach

To navigate these challenges, I focused on maintaining clarity, collaboration, and impact throughout the design process.

• Prioritise outcomes over outputs (whenever I can) by breaking complex problems into achievable milestones, ensuring progress even within tight timelines.

• Worked closely with engineers and product managers to understand technical limitations early, turning constraints from legacy systems and payment structures into informed design decisions.

• Aligned design with business goals by validating concepts through quick feedback loops, ensuring each solution balanced user needs with scalability and commercial value.

• Built on the design system foundation to speed up development and maintain consistency across iOS, Android, and desktop platforms.

Within Design Team

Working in a small, distributed design team required strong communication and shared problem-solving. We held weekly design syncs to align on ongoing work, discuss challenges, and collectively plan solutions. To push creative thinking further, we organised design jams to quickly ideate and prototype new approaches together.

Beyond internal collaboration, we also conducted user interviews as a team to better understand real user needs and pain points. Insights from these sessions directly informed our design decisions, helping us validate concepts early and ensure that every solution balanced usability with business goals.

This collaborative rhythm fostered alignment, efficiency, and shared ownership across the team, allowing us to move fast while keeping users at the center of our decisions.

THE LEARNING & REFLECTIONS

Beyond the Job

Who knew building a global chat and payment app would teach me just as much about human connection as it did about design systems?

Working together with the great talents taught me how to balance speed with intention. Tight timelines and evolving requirements pushed me to make decisions confidently, communicate clearly, and trust the team’s collective expertise.

Collaborating closely with designers across different time zones also reminded me that great products are built through shared understanding — not just strong visuals, but clear communication and aligned goals.

Through this experience, I deepened my understanding of how payment systems, user behavior, and design scalability intersect, and learned the importance of designing not only for usability, but also for business growth and long-term adaptability.