A banking app that trusts its users to read one number — then gets out of the way.
NovaPay is a neobank built for people who've been let down by their last three banks. The product brief was simple and brutal: if a new user can't check their balance, send $20, and close the app in under 12 seconds, we've failed. I led the mobile design from onboarding through the transfer flow.
Neobanks have a credibility problem with millennials who've been burned once and aren't coming back. We learned this fast during research: 9 of 10 users we interviewed said their last bank "felt like a punishment." Complicated menus, hidden fees, jargon-heavy language.
The design needed to feel friendly enough for a first-gen banking customer and secure enough for someone moving their emergency fund over. That's a thin needle.
Approach
12-second ruleBenchmarked every primary task against a 12-second ceiling. If a flow exceeded it, we reduced it — cut taps, defaulted fields, or moved the action to the home screen.
Balance-as-heroYour balance is the only thing that matters when you open a banking app. Everything else is secondary. One giant card, typography-forward, with a tasteful blur-on-scroll.
Quick-action deckFour action tiles — Send, Request, Pay Bill, Scan — sized for one-thumb reach. Each pre-selects the most likely recipient based on recent activity.
Receipts that read like textsTransaction feed designed like iMessage: contact avatar, short timestamp, clear status chip. Dispute is one tap.
Biometric-first, PIN-fallbackFace ID / Touch ID as the default. PIN is the fallback, not the primary. Cut average session open time by 2.3s.
Key Features
Hero Balance Card
Glass-morphism card with live balance, currency switcher, and animated masked-reveal for privacy mode.
Quick Actions
Send, request, pay, scan — all one tap away, each with haptic feedback and a 180ms state animation.
Live Transaction Feed
Real-time feed with smart grouping by date, merchant category icons, and inline dispute triggers.
Biometric Sign-In
Face ID default with graceful PIN fallback and device-trust revocation from any session.
Gesture Navigation
Native iOS bottom tab with swipe-between-accounts, pull-to-refresh balance, and a collapsible app bar.
Recipient Smart-Pick
Send flow pre-populates the three most-likely recipients based on recurrence and recency.
"I switched my direct deposit over the day after I installed it. It's the first banking app that didn't make me feel stupid."
— App Store review, 5★
Results
4.8★ App Store rating across 22,000+ reviews at the 6-month mark.
62% D7 retention — the top quartile of challenger banks benchmarked by Apptopia.
$180M in deposits moved over within the first two quarters post-launch.
Apple Design Award nomination for product design in the Finance category.
11-second median from app open to completed P2P send.
