Rise payments
Money management made simple and fun.
Services
Design strategy
User research
Market research
Data analysis
Interaction design
Interface design
Design system
Deliverables
Design roadmap
Product spec
Product tracking plan
0 to 1 product development
Open website
Rise payments platform
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Introduction
Rise is a financial platform built specifically for independent creators, small businesses, and individuals who needs to accept payments, pay vendors, move money instantly, and manage earnings without friction.
The client was a well known financial institution that had long served large organizations and enterprises, but realized they had a significant gap in their offering. They had nothing tailored for smaller businesses and individuals.
My role was to define and scope this underserved audience, uncover their specific challenges, design an MVP that could solve them and then test it with real potential users.
To get there, I spent time with creators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, learning exactly what they go through when handling payments. I wanted to understand what tools they use today, the pain points those tools create, and the solutions they wish existed. These insights became the foundation for a product designed to make managing money feel effortless, approachable, and even enjoyable.
Uncovering the challenges
I started with deep conversations with creators, freelancers, and small solo entrepreneurs across different industries, from digital artists, videographers and social media creators, to developers, online educators and freelancers.
The more I listened, the clearer it became that most existing financial tools weren’t designed for them at all. They were adaptations of business banking or payroll products built for companies with accounting teams, not for someone doing everything themselves.
Challenges identified
Most payment platforms often feel bloated, confusing, and optimized for accounting teams and large organizations, not solo entrepreneurs. High fees, hidden costs, and delays in accessing funds make it harder and slow for creators to get paid.
Many systems also require manual payouts, and notifications are easy to miss, making the wait even longer. Plus, most platforms force users to withdraw funds within 30 days, with no option to hold money.
Managing finances is just as frustrating. Creators can’t split withdrawals across multiple accounts or apps, and withdrawing cash is often limited or restricted altogether. On top of that, many services require clients to create an account just to pay, creating unnecessary friction and oftentimes limiting creators to who they can work with.
The opportunity
Through research, it became clear that the gap in the market wasn’t just about functionality, it was about building a financial tool that truly fit the way independent creators, freelancers, and small businesses work.
We decided to truly focus on the customer and shape the product to their needs. Through the process, we uncovered multiple opportunities to improve the experience, but not just that, our research also provided a big opportunity to stand out in the crowded market.
These opportunities guided the MVP design, ensuring every interaction, from the home page to payment review flows, worked toward making financial management for creators faster, clearer, and more empowering, improving clarity, providing more control and ultimately a great, creator first user experience.
I've outlined these experiences below.
Dashboard made for humans
Most finance dashboards feel like they were built for advanced users, accountants or people who are deeply technical. They are bloated with enterprise features and functionality.
This was one of the first things we realizes we had to adjust to how people actually think and provide simple experiences that are not trying to confuse users, but actually help them get an overview of their account.
We focused on creating a simple interface with the essentials up front. The emphasis is on understanding your finances easily and being able to take action quickly.
Simple transactions, friendly payment requests, and intuitive recipient flows, making money management feel approachable and fast, rather than intimidating.
Removing friction
Speed and control over funds is critical. And yet, rigid rules and long wait times were a recurring pain.
We designed complete access to funds with instant payouts, the ability to hold balances in multiple currencies, and split withdrawals into different accounts, so users could move and store money exactly how they want.
Building trust
Trust is an incredibly important part of building finance tools, especially when it comes to managing personal and business payments. By showing transparent fees and real time currency conversion at every payment step, we build trust and help creators keep more of what they make.
The design bakes this into every payment flow, with fees and rates updating live and surfaced clearly before confirmation.
Removing barriers
Many platforms enforce different rules that can be pretty limiting to what you can do with your own money.
Limited currencies you can transfer and receive money in, connecting to a limited number of accounts, or just one account in many cases, clients have to create accounts before they can pay you. All these factors are limiting and expose creators to risk of losing deals. Small creators need to have more flexibility and more control than that, so we decided to help them get there.
We allowed support for over a 100 different currencies, separate accounts and payment requests via simple links or email so that anyone could send money, removing a major adoption barrier for our users.
Additionally, our users wear many hats and are usually their own accountant as well. We wanted to give them tools that enable quick actions for sending and requesting funds and clear categorization of paid versus outstanding payments, so they could stay organized without needing spreadsheets.
Access to cash
Unlike large organization that issue cards to their employees and need to heavily control how the money is spent for multiple reasons, our users are individuals, managing their own business and income.
That meant that we could provide cars that allow cash transactions and withdrawal, making this the ultimate tool for managing finances, providing the flexibility our user base needs.
Simple insights
Much like the rest of our product, insights are human centered and not more complicated than they need to be. They focus on recent spend, general spend over time and savings over time with Rise, showing you all you need to know about your spending in one place.
The outcome
The final MVP that I delivered was an end to end experience for requesting, receiving, holding and sending money. We were able to create a simple and intuitive design system that feels like it's built for real people, not corporations.
With our tight alignment between functionality and actual user pain points, we were able to create an experience that feels less like a bank and more like a partner.
Instead of dry dashboards, we wanted to build a modern brand with clean, but fun looking design, focusing on clear hierarchy and micro interactions that make the experience satisfying, because managing money should feel as smooth as sending a message.
