Rise payments
Making money exchange and transfer 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
Team involved
Rebecca Visser
Content Director
Cole Vineyard
VP of Marketing
Albert Cloete
Engineer
Louise Lista
Engineer
Lemuel Flores
Engineer
Introduction
Rise is a new kind of payment platform. Made for independent creators and small businesses who need to move money quickly and manage their earnings without friction.
I was brought on to take it from idea to a complete vision. Along the way, I spent time understanding what creators actually go through when handling payments, and used those insights to design something that would make managing money feel effortless, approachable, and even enjoyable.
Uncovering the challenges
The more I talked to creators and freelancers, the clearer it became that most existing tools simply weren’t built for them.
Not built for individual creators
Most platforms are designed for companies with full accounting teams, not someone wearing every hat at once. Features often feel overwhelming or irrelevant, and interfaces rarely feel welcoming.
High fees and unfavorable terms.
Creators lose a lot to stacked fees—platform cuts, processor fees, hidden conversion costs—and many apps hold payouts until you reach certain thresholds.
Slow access to funds.
Waiting several days for money to hit your account is common, and many systems require you to manually trigger payouts.
Ability to hold money.
Users want to be able to hold money after receiving it, without being pressured to move money into banks or cards after a short time.
Ability to split withdrawals.
Users don't have the ability to split manage their money. They can't split withdrawals to different accounts, banks or apps and have to have only one default withdrawal method.
Withdrawing cash.
Many services don't allow business users to withdraw money, considering their customers employees and their accounts business property.
Getting paid without client having an account.
Many platforms force the paying side to create account, limiting who customers can take payments from and where the finances can come from.
Poor user experience.
Dashboards often feel like they're made for accountants, not creators. Setup is confusing and mobile apps often leave out key features.
Bottom line.
Creators are stick piecing together tools that weren't designed with their workflow in mind, paying high fees, waiting on payouts, and juggling a fragmented financial stack.
The opportunity
With all of that in mind, we set out to design Rise — a platform that brings payments, currency exchange, and insights together in one place. The goal was simple: make the experience feel clear, friendly, and fast.
Instead of feeling like a traditional banking app, Rise was designed to feel light and modern — something you actually enjoy opening, not something you dread.
Every part of Rise was designed to feel approachable. Instead of dark, heavy dashboards, the interface uses a warm, minimal palette and plenty of space. The flows are simple, the data is clear and interactions feel human.
For creators, managing finances often feels like a chore. With Rise, it becomes something you can feel confident about. Simple, fluid and even a little fun.
The simplicity
The whole platform is based around the idea that creating a portfolio should be highly simplified and fast. The platform offers a variety of pre-built layouts and section variations for each of the pre-designed blocks that users can select and apply with just a click. This makes it easy for video creators, who may not have design expertise, to build a polished website without needing to start from scratch or worry about design details.
On the other hand, users can drag and drop different elements, such as videos, text blocks, or images into their preferred positions in the custom made sections. This visual approach eliminates the need for coding and simplifies complex design tasks, while still allowing advanced customization.
One additional focus was creating the perfect environment for video creators specifically, so they can express themselves and share their work on the best possible way.
The consistency
For video editors, ensuring that their visual content is perfectly presented is crucial. That’s why we introduced a few visual adjustment tools, offering controls for lighting, brightness, contrast, tone and HSL. These options allow video editors to fine-tune the appearance of their images or video thumbnails directly within the platform, without needing to switch between multiple editing tools.
This level of control is essential for video editors, who often need to ensure consistency in tone and color across their portfolios. Whether it’s adjusting the lighting to match a particular aesthetic or tweaking the saturation to make a shot more vibrant, these options give editors the ability to enhance their visuals and ensure their work stands out in any portfolio.
The showcase
We knew that many video editors wanted more than just a simple grid stack to show their work — they needed a unique way to showcase their projects and tell a visual story. To help our members do just that, we've created numerous custom grids to showcase projects in a more interactive and captivating way.
The balance
One of the key challenges for video editors is organizing visual content in a way that feels cohesive and professional. We introduced a simple grid control to allow layout structure adjustments, without overwhelming users with technical design details. By adjusting the number of columns and spacing with just a few clicks, editors can easily showcase their work in a clean, organized manner, ensuring that their videos and related content are presented with precision and clarity.
Extended support
The portfolio builder allows you to showcase your video projects with an embedded, responsive video player that gives users full control. With features like playback speed adjustment, lighting control, and seamless full-screen transitions, videographers can ensure their work is experienced exactly as intended.
A lot of our users are also music and audio creators. That's why we've created a native music player. This tool enables viewers to engage both visually and sonically with your work, making it ideal for portfolios featuring music, voiceovers, or complex sound design.
In addition, we’ve introduced a soundtrack component you can choose to show, below the video, designed specifically to highlight the audio tracks used in a project. This feature is perfect for audio creators who want to showcase how their music or sound design contributes to the visual narrative.
Outcome
After releasing The Review we saw a boost in subscription length immediately, but after the release of The Portfolio, this trend multiplied and we saw significantly higher subscription lifetime increase and the churn going down. In addition to that, we saw an increase in new members, with people outside of the video production creating their portfolio through Motion Array.
Eventually, this product together with the other initiatives we brought to life helped us achieve 185% growth year over year and the marketplace grew to 600k products and over 9m users.
The subscription offered a significantly better long term value, extending subscription length by 16x and drastically reducing churn.
During my second year at Motion Array, we've achieved and exceeded the goals we set and the company was acquired by Artlist for $65M.
