Fintech UX Design Principles: Guide to Effective User Experience

Exceptional fintech UX design is the cornerstone of success and is changing as trends in fintech industry shape the market. Intuitive interactions can build trust, foster loyalty, and drive widespread adoption of their products and services.

Driven by technological advancements in front-end, the fintech industry is experiencing unprecedented growth. For example, the transaction value in both neobanking and digital payments segments achieves the highest value, with the latter reaching a staggering 15.53 trillion U.S. dollars in 2028.

This dynamic environment demands a relentless focus on user experience. Therefore, I will explore key UX design principles that guide the development of financial technology solutions and UX design trends to ensure that your software stays on top of the wave.

What is a Fintech UX Design

First, let’s define the name before proceeding to the key principles of financial technology design.

Fintech User Experience (UX) design is a process of creating a user-friendly interface for a fintech app or a product, focusing on the complex customer-first experience.

This entails the need for a UX designer to conduct multi-faceted market and user research on user needs to create an enticing interface. The user research ensures that the experience is seamless and corresponds to both the business needs and customer requirements.

However, user research is just a part of everything a UX designer has to do before getting to the tech aspects of the workflow. Usually, the prep for UX design encompasses several steps, such as:

• Market and competitor research
• User research
• Composition of user persona
• Information architecture
• Wireframing

Other components might differ from project to project or even from expert to expert. The principles might also be different for healthcare and a fintech UX design. One thing remains the same—a customer-first approach.

But before we proceed to talk about the principles of fintech UX design, let’s also brush up on the UI and how it’s different from UX.

How does Fintech UX Design Differs From UI

User Interface design (UI) and User Experience design are commonly perceived as a part of a whole. While this might be true for many projects, they have different aspects that clearly put a line in the definition.

UI is a design practice focused on visual appeal, ensuring that the application is enticing to the eye of the audience by using common and innovative means to ensure user engagement.

The difference between them is clearly demonstrated in the following table:

Together, UI and UX practices overlap in Fintech to create user-friendly products with enhanced brand value by conducting research to utilize the best practices.

Principles of UX Design for Fintech Apps

Fintech user experience goes beyond aesthetics; it’s about creating a seamless and enjoyable user experience that prioritizes security, trust, and user empowerment. Well-designed fintech apps enable users to make informed decisions, manage their finances effectively, and achieve their financial goals.

Understanding user needs, behaviors, and pain points is crucial for effective fintech UX design. This creates the need for principles of financial technology UX, which I will highlight in this section.

#1 Security and Trust

As I mentioned above, UX design mostly focuses on satisfying user needs and pain points. Over 67% of the UX users express a higher level of concern about data privacy in fintech apps. Therefore, security and trust are the foremost principles of fintech UX design.

There are many ways to ensure satisfaction with the need for security and trust in fintech software, but the most efficient way is to ensure that legal content in your app is easily accessible and read through.

For example, with one of the NDA products we’ve worked with, a Saudi-based challenger bank, we decided to implement a SIMHA contract for users who wish to get a new card. To ensure that the contents of the contract were read and accessible even after the sign, we’ve implemented pop-ups and checkboxes and created user-friendly navigation to find signed documents in the app.

Tip: Emphasize the business/customer side instead of the tech side. This will help you understand and apply business concerns while your fintech development partner can tackle the tech side.

#2 Accessibility and Usability

Accessibility and usability are the second most important aspects of fintech design. Fintech’s audience can be drastically different, and the appeal of fintech apps is usually in their accessibility compared to a regular brick-and-mortar bank visit.

Over 64% of adults use at least one of the fintech apps. Among them are users of different ages with various needs and pain points. For example, the highest trust in fintech demonstrates the 18 to 34 age bracket, with the indicator becoming exponentially lower for other age groups.

Source: Statista

So, for accessibility, it’s important to pay attention to your specific TA first. Then, of course, ensure that they will have a comfortable experience using the application.

The accessibility principle is about creating inclusive experiences for all users, regardless of their abilities.

Personally, I use these practices in fintech design to achieve accessibility and usability:

1. High color contrast,
2. Readable typography measurements,
3. Easy screen navigation,
4. Alternative text for images,
5. Screen reader compatibility,
6. Seizure safety (avoid color flashes).

For example, one project I’ve personally worked on was fintech software for older users in one of the smaller European countries. We were brainstorming the interface that could create the best experience—again, the example of UI and fintech UX design being intertwined—and decided to develop a minimalistic app with an emphasis on the color purple.

Despite finances being usually associated with trust-building colors, such as green, e.g., like Wise does, and blue, e.g., Coinbase app interface, we’ve decided to go with purple based on our own research conducted specifically for our customers’ geography.

#3 Clarity and Simplicity

Clarity and simplicity in fintech user experience have deep roots in easy and quick user navigation. The main base of this principle lies in the idea that the software needs to be simple enough to be intuitive for the first-time user but not too boring to still have the attention of the seasoned audience.

One aspect that can help here is competitor research. Thus, if you are creating a digital bank and you research other digital banks, you will notice that they display the transaction history mostly below the card pictorial or by clicking on it. This creates an expectation that your users will have, and following this practice will make the software more intuitive for them.

Also, a different aspect of the clarity principle is UX writing. It has to be clear and assertive, without complex niche-specific words or high-level vocabulary, as your users might not be as tech-savvy.

So, to ensure clarity and simplicity in the app, here are several practices:

1. Use interactive instructions to help users track their progress in the onboarding process.
2. Employ simple layouts with clickable navigation.
3. Ensure that the software elements are consistent and understandable, e.g., if all cards are displayed horizontally, and maintain this principle when adding a new card.
4. Provide the user with all the needed information, such as screens explaining specific app elements or pop-ups summarizing what a certain contract is or why it’s needed.

Tip: Ensure that every action your user takes has its meaning and a point. Help them navigate by explaining why a certain action has to be performed and what is expected of them. For example, this is how Wise does it.

#4 User Onboarding

Onboarding is one of the aspects that can ensure customer retention, as over 74% of users claim they will take their business elsewhere just because the onboarding process takes too long. In turn, 86% of users are set to stay loyal to the application if the onboarding education is provided.

For fintech UX design, onboarding is the equivalent of guiding your users through all the processes in your meticulously crafted app. It’s best if the onboarding is iterative, interactive, and simple, without complex steps or large blocks of text.

In my opinion, these are the key aspects that can make your client onboarding process the most efficient:

• Minimal steps
• Clear instructions
• Interactive tutorials
• Automated fill-out for forms
• Accessible information, i.e. FAQ
• Regulatory adherence, such as KYC and AML

Here’s an example of the onboarding process for Revolut app’s users.

Source: Medium

The text is easy to read and understand, and the steps are quick and easy to follow. This simple onboarding process is part of the reason why Revolut currently has over 45 million users.

#5 Testing and Iteration

It’s a common misconception that testing is expensive and should only be done after the initial stages of design are finished. I think this idea has to be challenged, as there are so many ways to test and iterate from the very beginning of composing the proof of concept to the late-stage design with high-fidelity prototypes.

For example, when the idea is just being born, and we’ve just finished the initial talks with the customer, at the very beginning of the discovery phase, we can already test the fintech user experience. To do so, you would only need a paper and a pan. Paper prototypes are meant to represent the outline, being the low-fidelity prototype to the maximum.

Source: Justinmind

With this method of testing, I usually just ask the participants to identify which niche they think the screens belong to. The goal is to create a recognizable fintech pattern and stay consistent with the market to ensure maximum efficiency.

Focus groups would be beneficial for testing at the latest stages. They don’t necessarily have to be your new users; a focus group might be comprised of colleagues, other developers, or people signed up for testing. If you have a high-fidelity prototype with functional elements, focus groups would help you understand whether your app provides the expected experience.

Now, after we’ve discussed the principles, I suggest we move on to current trends in fintech. It’s always interesting to see the underline in the basic components of the workflow, but fintech UX trends are where these elements all come together. It’s in these new ideas and opportunities we can truly see the principles of design being applied in practice.

UX Trends 2025: Effective User Experience for Fintech

Current trends in fintech closely overlap with the industry’s overall trends. Based on my experiences and research during my practical work, I’ve composed a list of my personal observations and ideas.

The image below depicts the most exciting trends in fintech industry, which, I believe, will be present in fintech design 2025.

#1 Gamification

Gamification in fintech UX design has been on the rise for quite some time as customers’ requirements gravitate towards engagement and interactivity.

Gamification is the practice of including gaming elements in non-gaming software.

Currently, among the gamification practices used in fintech UX design, I believe the following ones will be on the rise:

1. Leaderboards. Fintechs might adopt a gamification practice that creates leaderboards to praise users for various achievements, such as better spending behaviors or enhanced app activity.
2. Loyalty programs. Loyalty can also be a gamified experience. For example, users spending more time in the app can get internal coins to spend on card skins or other decorative elements.
3. Reward systems. For different desired behaviors, fintech can assign users various rewards, such as badges.
4. Interactive elements. These might include mini-games incorporated into the app. Such an idea could help hold users’ attention for longer and create an engaging experience for those moments when the user has to wait for a process to complete, e.g., expecting a transaction confirmation.
5. Progress bars. Progress tracking, for example, for savings, can encourage users to display the same behavior more just to complete the task they’ve started.

Gamification practices are different and can be used in different ways. Learn more about gamification in fintech here.

#2 Minimalism

Minimalism in fintech UX design slowly becomes an unspoken rule of current trends in fintech. If you pay attention to the examples I’ve shown above, the interfaces are simple and easy to navigate because, currently, minimalistic experience is also something that we associate with finances and premium software.

This way, I believe that the following design choices will become trending in fintech UX design in 2025:

1. Clean interfaces with no distractions or extra elements.
2. The main features are highlighted, and others are hidden or deleted.
3. Subtle animations as opposed to constant movement.
4. Micro-interactions for quick feedback with pictorials instead of survey fields and extensive surveys.

Basically, I believe that current trends in fintech industry are moving towards both interactiveness and simplicity, leaving behind tacky colors and bold design choices.

#3 AI for Accessibility

Accessibility becomes a big part of user experience not only for fintech but also for applications, regardless of industry or niche. And I believe it can be greatly enhanced with AI solutions integrated into the front-end and UX.

If you wish to know more about accessibility, read this article on general principles of inclusive design.

Thus, AI-powered voice assistants can, for example, help users with visual impairments navigate financial apps and complete tasks hands-free. AI can personalize the user interface based on individual needs and preferences, such as language, font size, and color contrast.

The benefits provided by AI solutions in accessibility are most likely to make it the new black for fintech UX design trends 2025.

#4 Product Identity

As a business owner, you need to consider product identity when creating a fintech UX design. A strong product identity ensures a consistent user experience across all touchpoints.

Product identity is the personality of your brand, the way it looks, and the experience it provides.

Fintech companies can build strong brand identities by telling compelling stories about their values and how they help users achieve their financial goals. By maintaining consistency through your applications, you can create a recognizable layout exclusive to your brand.

More so, consistency becomes increasingly important when new features or products are introduced in the application. As I mentioned earlier, if you introduce a new product, you need to adhere to the practices you’ve used in your app before.

For example, new cards or documents added to your app should be in the same section as the ones that existed before. A completely innovative feature, in turn, should have a new section to avoid confusion.

#5 Mobile-First Approach

There are more mobile users than those who prefer web applications, and statistics are very telling. Thus, in Q4 of 2024, over 62% of traffic came from mobile device users. Therefore, creating a mobile application for fintech UX design becomes more drastic than adhering to web app development practices.

A mobile-first approach is a practice of software development that focuses on creating an app for mobile devices and later adding a web version.

For fintech UX design, this practice first means complying with different devices, from bigger to smaller screens. You must ensure that the content is visible, readable, and easy to navigate on portable screens. Ensure that your app has an intuitive screen structure that is accessible for one-hand operation.

Read more about the mobile-first approach in design in another article on our blog to learn how it can help with site performance.

#6 Self-Onboarding

Self-service user onboarding is a process where users guide themselves through the steps of setting up an account or learning to use a product or service.

From a certain point of view, self-onboarding is akin to self-checkout in a grocery store; some people consider it integral to a modern-day solution, while others prefer guided onboarding.

Currently, around 60% of users prefer self-service portals to those with guided help from customer support service employees.

Overall, self-onboarding can be beneficial for companies that seek a simplified approach to onboarding. You can simply implement interactive instructions to help users navigate through the app. Don’t oversimplify it. Instead, make sure that each step your user takes is meaningful and informed so the user feels compelled to complete the onboarding.

Customer support is full of innovation from the front-end part, and it expands beyond just UX design trends in 2025.

#7 Biometric Identification

Biometrics in the context of fintech UX design is foremost about automation.

Biometric identification is a security practice that utilizes biometric data, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, to identify the user.

By incorporating biometric identification into your fintech UX design, you can automate the identification process by eliminating redundant passcodes. This technology helps your users spend less time logging into the app and enables them to utilize the best features faster.

To learn more about biometric identification, you can read this article that dissects the technology as a security innovation.

#8 Crypto and Blockchain

Blockchain technology can be used to create secure and decentralized identity solutions, enhancing privacy and security for users. As mentioned before, security is a big pain point for fintechs, and the decentralized nature of blockchain can help solve this problem.

I consider blockchain a trend since it is currently growing with a roaring speed, as the graph below shows.

Decentralized finance is a practice that can be applied to fintech UX design. DeFi has the potential to make financial services more accessible to the unbanked or underbanked.

As a solution, decentralized finance also provides more opportunities for creating user-friendly applications by building more transparent, automated, and personalized software. Blockchain can automate many financial processes, reducing the need for intermediaries and streamlining the user experience.

Conclusions

Considering all this, it’s evident and safe to conclude that fintech UX design is a complex process that can be carefully executed through practices that ensure security, ease of use, accessibility, and clarity.

The UX design trends are fairly consistent, and following them in 2025 would be a subtle continuation of adhering to the same principles for those who have already worked on these user experience trends in the preceding 2024. In 2025, they rather represent the evolution than a pivoting change.

However, to navigate the user experience trends, you would need a technical partner. We at DashDevs have over 15 years of development experience and have delivered 500+ products. Our extensive expertise can help us carry out even the most complex UX. Contact us to implement your idea.