Rewarding good financial behavior
CRED
2022 – 2025
CRED is the fifth-largest payments app in India. Over the past three years, I worked on almost all the products they have, mainly focusing on payments, lending, and credit systems used by 15M+ users.
Most of the time, the things we designed ended up receiving equal amounts of praise and criticism because of our bold choices and opinions on taste.
Throughout all of it, what stayed with me wasn't the scale. It was a recurring observation, most financial products work. But very few feel intentional.
Building a larger vision of what feeling the user walks away with is what's often missing.
This is a story of how we made good financial behavior rewarding.
Choreographing complexity
Most financial products are riddled with details and heavy decision-making. That's where this core tenet of doing one thing at a time came from.
While onboarding onto products where users need to enter a lot of details, we broke the flow into smaller focused steps that transitioned smoothly from one to another.
CRED card - onboarding sequence
In CRED Cash+, choosing a loan amount involved multiple decisions. Showing everything at once increased decision fatigue.
So we created an interaction where the screen split, first you choose the amount, then associated details reveal beneath it. One decision, then the next.
CRED Cash - money withdrawal selection
We used this sequencing style everywhere to tone down complexity.
In CRED Cash+, we also calculated credit limits based on leveraged investment assets. We animated the system to fetch all funds, then morph and add them up into the final limit.
CRED Cash+ - credit limit calculation
Sequencing complexity worked really well. Users could focus better, and that made decision-making easier.
Explaining with motion
This principle is where I leaned most on motion to tell the story better and make the product make more sense.
In CRED Cash+, we anchored the experience around a locker metaphor, investments are stored in the locker and credit balance flows out.
CRED Cash+ (from left) - Locker visual, Money withdrawal
I used the same principle for simpler moments like payment processing, where gradients and state transitions made success feel alive.
Making a payment with credit card
For CRED Money onboarding, we used motion to explain how balances and expenses connect across multiple accounts.
CRED money onboarding
Compounding effect of care
Trust isn't earned in one moment. It compounds through thoughtful details. We designed many small touches that made users smile.
When users received their CRED Card, their name was engraved letter by letter.
user's name getting engraved onto the CRED Card
Some of these ideas never shipped, but exploring them helped shape stronger interaction instincts.
(form left) Home screen interaction, CRED Money Interaction
These drama moments helped turn serious financial tools into something emotionally legible. Over time that accumulation becomes identity.
Designing all of this helped me build taste, not just as aesthetic preference, but as judgment for what works.
Not everything was perfect, but the ambition stayed consistent: design things that feel considered at every pixel and interaction.
It's like building a monument in a sea of skyscrapers.
These projects and many more are the result of countless individuals' contributions over several years. Taking a moment to thank some I had the privilege of working closely with - Abhishek A, Aditya Madan, Aman Singh, Anoop Chidurala, Aswin K, Atul Khola, Gaurav Chandrakar, Indrajith Baby, Jibin Joseph, Malik Shaikh, Midhun Mohan, Naasha Taraporewala, Nandini Gangal, Nikhil Kirve, Ranjith Nair, Ravi Sankar, Richu Michael, Rishabh Mandhana, Sarath Chandran, Shivani Matlapudi, Siddhika Deshmukh, Varenya Pandya, Vitthal Bhat.