Xapo Bank: Wealth Management App

The research phase was fueled by the stakeholders' vision: enable people in emerging markets to access US dollars and invest in stocks, crypto, and other financial instruments. We validated this through a questionnaire to existing Xapo users. The findings confirmed the hypothesis: users with significant savings wanted investment advisors and wealth expansion tools. Xapo wasn't chasing user volume. It was chasing user quality.

I benchmarked 20+ competitor apps (via 11:FS) to understand what functions were table stakes and what could be added value. The gap was clear: most investing apps were built for young, engaged traders. None were built for cautious, older savers who wanted to park wealth, not play with it.

Six hundred assets is a paradox: enough choice to be a real investing product, enough to paralyze a careful person. The catalog was built to be entered gently: search when you know what you want, curated paths when you don't, and a deliberately selective crypto list rather than an everything-listed free-for-all. Fractional shares lowered the stakes of the first step: a first investment can be small, reversible, and calm.

In a trading app, the hero screen is the chart. In a bank, the hero screens are the ones where money moves. We spent disproportionate design time on the moments where a member's anxiety peaks: funding Wealth for the first time, reviewing and confirming an order, and understanding exactly how assets are held. The custody story is told at the point of purchase, not buried in a help center.

The visual and behavioral language was tuned against the casino: long-term framing over tick-by-tick drama, restrained data presentation, confirmation patterns that slow the member down at exactly the right moments. The measure of success was simple: Wealth had to feel like a room in the same bank, not a door into a different building.

Every journey started as a sketch alongside project managers, then flow maps, then wireframes. Visual design entered only once the structure survived scrutiny from legal and stakeholders. The POC was built with minimal resources: an Android frontend, a backend team, and three KYC screens to prove eligibility and asset access could work.

After the POC succeeded, I worried about how the slice-by-slice roadmap would affect the overall in-app experience. I created a large vision map to show stakeholders and product teams what we were aiming for. It helped the campaign, gave dev teams a north star, and let us think through the roadmap better.

For MVP, we improved the eligibility flow, optimized KYC to a minimum, expanded requirements with account details and Wealth statements, and grew the asset list to 150+ stocks. Corner cases were thought through. The design system evolved alongside. New components and requirements appeared constantly, increasing complexity, but the system absorbed it.

I shaped the design direction and strategy, designed core flows end to end, and partnered with engineering, legal, and marketing through a company transition and shifting product map.

What I also shipped alongside Wealth: Lightning Network, USDC, and USDT rails inside the regulated wallet.

If I revisited this project today, I would change three things: