Work

Ka-ching

A 0→1 pilot of a Gen-Z payments app for Mastercard, with er studio. I led product; 50,000+ people used the pilot.

50,000+pilot users

Company
Mastercard · er studio
Role
Product lead
Timeline
2019 – 2023
Platforms
iOS, Android
Type
0→1

TL;DR

Problem
Mastercard wanted a payments app for Gen Z and outsourced the 0→1 pilot to er studio, the studio I co-founded.
What I did
I led product. Roy Wu, er studio's design lead, led visual design; Mastercard's engineers built it for iOS and Android.
Result
50,000+ pilot users. A few New York City schools, Parsons among them, were pilot partners.
Two phone mockups of Ka-ching: the home screen with a greeting, a Parsons student card, a balance bar and quick actions, next to the splash screen with the rainbow K logo and a physical card
Ka-ching. Home screen, splash screen and the card, as rendered in the design files. · Source: er studio design files · design: Roy Wu, design lead

Context & problem

Mastercard wanted a payments app made to capture the Gen Z market, and outsourced the 0→1 pilot to er studio, the studio I co-founded. I led product.

Students were the audience, and the problem was less about moving money than about making a payments app something a student would want to open.

Discovery & insight

A student new to credit meets a new vocabulary (credit limit, due date, credit score) before they have any habits around it. The insight I built on was that money tools for this audience should feel less intimidating and more social, closer to the other apps on their phone than to a bank.

Strategy & bets

The bet was an app that is intuitive, social and educational at once: the card, the balance and the next due date up front, with student deals and campus events alongside, so there is a reason to open it beyond paying. We ran the pilot with a deliberately mixed set of New York City schools, from a creative school to the Ivy League to public schools, so the result would say something about Gen Z rather than about one campus.

Solution

The screen set covers onboarding, sign-up, student-card verification, a finance home with spending, budget and available balance, a payment-due calendar, a spending breakdown by category, brand and software discounts, campus events, and a profile with alerts.

Grid of about twenty Ka-ching screens: onboarding, sign up, verify your student card, finance home, payment due calendar, spending pie chart, brand discounts, software discounts, DT events, profile and the home screen
scroll ↕The screen set from the design files. Scroll to see all of it. · Source: er studio design files · design: Roy Wu, design lead

The visual language is documented as a kit: soft, raised surfaces, pastel gradients, a calendar, gauges, progress bars and the card itself.

Component sheet: navigation icons, category chips, buttons, a calendar, Parsons card variants, a dashboard tile set, a FICO-style gauge, a points dial, balance and budget bars and a barcode
The component kit. Buttons, chips, calendar, cards, gauges and balance bars. · Source: er studio deck, 2020 · design: Roy Wu
A hand holding a phone that shows the Ka-ching splash screen with the rainbow K
The splash screen. · Source: er studio, 2020 · design: Roy Wu

Execution

I led product. er studio brought the design, product and concept creative direction, with Roy Wu as design lead, and Mastercard’s engineers built the app for iOS and Android. A few New York City schools took part in the pilot; Parsons was one of them.

Validation & results

50,000+
pilot users

The pilot reached 50,000+ users on iOS and Android. The Ka-ching site today shows an entirely different product.

Reflection

A young audience changes the job of a payments product: being correct about balances and due dates is the floor, and the app also has to be something a student chooses to open. I would build a pilot sample across very different schools again, because one campus only tells you about that campus.