About Xapo
Xapo is a Digital Financial Services company, a secure, mobile-based banking account that allows you to hold, exchange, spend and transfer without fees in multiple currencies and Bitcoin.
Xapo was looking for a person with broader design experience outside of digital for their card squad. When I joined, they were going through a heavy rebrand and a huge gap has opened where they were no longer able to issue debit cards nor maintain the ones already in the hands of their customers. And people were not happy. How did we know?
Lack of a debit card feature was consistently in the top 10 complaints to Customer Support for months. A quick look at that, our personas and, to be completely fair, common sense. Brought us to our problem.
problem.
User
No checking account product is complete without a fully rounded payment card.
Business
Low Customer Lifetime Value. No card means = low number of transactions = low customer lifetime value.For this business to stay healthy we need to have a continuous flow of customer transactions.
challenges.
From a Product design perspective, I was facing the challenge of not only having to create a user-friendly experience but make sure we spew confidence and help regain our customers’ trust and faith in the product.
Due to the lack of a solid card product before, I needed a helper in all this as there wasclose to no data I could work with.
Not only that, but we were launching the product in multiple regions with the aim to create a global offering so I had to be mindful of different behaviors as well as languages.
But the biggest challenge with this was partner & card issuer limitations & specifics, not only around money in and money out operations but also in regards to how the card operates, how it can be managed, or how it works.
We had todeliver 4 very distinct experienceswhich was a challenge for both design and engineering as we were launching in:
- Europe: Multicurrency debit card
- US: Debit card and a USD and BTC account
- Argentina: Prepaid card in Argentine pesos
- Brazil: Debit card linked to the user’s BRL balance
OKRs.
Increase customer lifetime value by offering a comprehensive feature set and a frictionless customer experience.
Minimize friction points to ensure a smooth experience. As I said we had to focus on customer trust & not simply provide a product, but provide a product that works both in-app and outside of it.
Funnel completion of 80%.
We had to identify success areas and problems and fix them. Some customers have been waiting for this product for a long time and then it was taken away. We had to mitigate that by ensuring the smoothest experience possible. We had to think about the end-to-end experience – from ordering the card through activating it, through receiving it in the mail and beautiful design to bring the enjoyment of using it on a day-to-day basis.
Full process cycle completion – from ordering to making transactions.
We had to deliver features to the customers based on their expectations in order to be successful and build loyalty. Build a roadmap for the next releases and inform future iterations.
Prioritize feature set.
NPS over 35.
Milestones & metrics
Flows that had already been developed, but never tested. Shortly after I started I immediately identified certain friction points. So I needed to arm myself with data in order to make data- and user-driven decisions. I wanted to validate my initial ideas before we launch a BETA, which was a long-term goal, and use the Test Level Satisfaction & Customer Sentiment metrics in order to measure the overall customer satisfaction & the Net promoter score based on the overall card experience.
We wanted to get a complete overview of the true experience gained by the end-users while experiencing the product. This was needed due to the fact we had the added aspect of physicality in the face of the plastic Xapo card.
A business goal was for 100% of our users to own a debit card.
Parters in crime.
I worked closely with the PM on vision and ideation, partnered with research to validate decisions through qualitative insights, and collaborated with content on messaging and copy. The PO translated PM/PD priorities into user stories, coordinated backend and frontend teams, and drove delivery, while engineering helped surface technical constraints and dependencies early. I also collaborated with fellow product designers through regular show-and-tells to stay aligned on the design system and overall product direction, and joined visioning sessions with the co-founder and Head of Product to align on strategy.
My role.
I partnered with the PM on ideation and solution design, worked with research to gather qualitative insights and validate ideas through user testing, and owned lo-fi to hi-fi designs and prototypes. I collaborated with content on messaging, and with engineering on execution while maintaining the design system.
Process & friction.
After initial discovery and ideation, we moved into validation and iteration ahead of a beta, aiming to launch with a solid baseline solution. Midway, a new business requirement emerged: drive revenue by prompting all users to order a card immediately on app open, with no option to skip.
While this aligned with the goal of ensuring every account had a card, it raised a critical UX question—does forcing users into a flow that blocks access to their own money create trust, or friction? As one user put it, it felt like “a wall between me and my money,” even if the process was short.
Xapo’s value proposition is built on security, instant access to funds, and seamless exchange between bitcoin and fiat—ultimately, trust.
The proposed solution introduced several friction points:forced address verification, mandatory acceptance of T&Cs without time to review, and blocked web access due to in-app 2FA. Together, these created a critical breakdown in the experience, limiting access to funds, reducing transparency around fees and security, and ultimately eroding user trust at moments when confidence matters most.
Research.
I ran a series of moderated usability tests that validated my hypothesis: forcing a card order with no opt-out created significant friction. For users like Marcus, a finance director managing both personal and client assets, immediate access to the app is critical—and the forced flow acted as a blocker at high-stakes moments.
This insight led to a broader program of moderated and unmoderated testing to evaluate the experience, UI clarity, and the discoverability and usefulness of key features.
Findings.
Take important content out of the banner context and consider removing the illustration.
2/6 people mentioned they wanted to be reassured of the PIN they entered. Add a re-enter PIN section.
1/6 people mentioned choosing a date of card delivery. Consider offering elected delivery dates
Keep the hang-tight screen & improve the UI.
Trade offs.
Pitch screen.
On the Pitch screen of the card flows some options seemed too overwhelming with one user saying “This is banking. This is serious. Don’t show me confetti.” Some tested well. As a trade-off, we did not immediately act on that.
Delivery address.
When testing the delivery flow, we noticed a gap between what users expected and what the product could support. Seeing a delivery date set expectations they couldn’t control, which quickly led to frustration, so we chose to defer that feature.
More importantly, many users didn’t realize their address was incomplete until their card failed to arrive. Instead of letting this become a support issue, we made missing details visible at the right moment and gave users a simple way to fix them before moving on.
(Controversial) Animation.
Despite business pushback, users responded positively to a “card in progress” screen—it made them feel seen, like something was being built just for them.
Behind the scenes, card issuance depended on multiple third-party providers with unpredictable response times, which led to confusing status updates and false impressions of validation.
We kept the animation that created a sense of care and progress, but removed time estimates and unnecessary statuses to preserve trust and clarity.
Card dashboard.
The Card dashboardwas getting really busy and when we asked participants to activate their card they seem to have formed some sort of banner blindness, but also due to the amount of text or else. So we knew we had to provide them with a clear way and visible way to activate their card and set their PIN which tested really well. Also we decided to show them the delivery address in case they had make a mistake to act on it by contacting support.
Other trade-offs.
Getting the card delivered mattered most—if it doesn’t arrive, nothing else works—so we focused on improving delivery first, knowing features like tracking would come later. PIN confirmation was clearly important too, but required removing technical constraints before we could ship it.
Users also valued card controls, especially freezing a card, so we included that as a core safety feature while deferring spend limits and advanced controls to later iterations. More complex benefits were intentionally left out of the MVP, with plans to introduce them once we could offer real value rather than a promise.
Beta.
The main objective was to get a complete overview of the end-to-end user experience – digital & physical by rolling out to 2% of our users.
After multiple iterations and after having developed most of the things in the pipeline, we ran beta campaigns in Brazil, Argentina, the US, UK, and Spain with existing customers as well as an alpha campaign internally.
My role was to design the emails as well as work closely with our copywriter to devise the whole communication strategy not only for the beta but for the BAU emails as well for all 4 regions. Also, I worked with engineering and architecture to get these out to customers.
We would measure the Test Level Satisfaction of the end-to-end experience of our cardholder customer.
The goal was to accelerate the adoption of the debit card among selected users and collect objective, independent information about the quality of the new card service via live transactions and customer survey feedback in a short period of time.
Research.
30% of invitees’ participation.
We ran the beta in Brazil, the US, and Argentina. As well as an internal Alpha test in Europe.
We did get very positive feedback with leaving our customers with a flattering feeling making them feel honored and privileged, but moreover, the flows were mostly praised for ease of use, simplicity, and speed.
Challenges.
Merging the Account and Card tabs.
I had to find a way to make it visually clear which balance is the card drawing from (debit vs prepaid vs debit multicurrency) and at the same time adhere to our issuers’ regulations around card design within the app. And communicate the different card statuses such as a card in delivery, card frozen, card disabled, card not activated.
UI considering different card requirements
I explored multiple design directions, but what worked for one card program didn’t always translate to another. In the end, strict Visa requirements limited how a card could be visually represented in-app.
The final design balanced those constraints by adapting to different card types: showing balance directly on debit and prepaid cards, using a separate balance for single-currency prepaid cards, and a neutral layout for multicurrency cards—one solution that worked across all variations.
Finale.
We were ready for the final touches. I prepared a series of Principle prototypes and below is a snippet of the actual app developed by our iOS team. We wanted to design a smooth transition from the account tab to the card view with a good-looking animation of the card considering all of its statuses.
Unfortunately, in March 2020, Xapo went through a huge change. The product is now taking a different direction and we were unable to finish a lot of the amazing work we had started. 50% of the employees were let go and development has stopped until we work on the value proposition for the new product.
But to end on a positive note, this has been an amazing learning experience and everything we encountered along the way is now extremely helpful. And although our target audience is changing, a lot of our findings are still valid and we are using this knowledge to build an even better product.
