What's Warp?

Warp is a Mexican fintech company that designs and builds simple, honest, and transparent financial products, while rethinking the banking of today and the future.

I was the main designer tasked with the development of the Warp app. From the beginning, we wanted to create an app that gave our users financial independence and made them forget all the bureaucracy, fees, branches, and inefficient call centers.

Opening an account

I went out in the streets and interviewed several people, young and adult, about the things they love and hate about their banks. One of the most common complaints was the time it took to open an account, not only the time spent waiting in the bank branch but the time it takes to transport, to find the paperwork, and to get a debit card.

We knew we could build something better, give all these people a way of opening an account without even leaving their couch.

The first time you sign up to the Warp app, you can start your account opening process immediately. You just have to fill in the information, take a selfie, and a photo of your ID and you're all set! It takes less than 5 minutes.

Paying Someone

Payments are one of the biggest areas of innovation and improvement in banking, is also one of the most used features of our app, which is why we needed to make sure that sending or receiving money was super easy.

Banks have always separated payments in two halves: payments out and payments in. Payments out are usually made dictating an account number or CLABE to the executive or to the convenience store attendant; payments in are treated just like any other deposit to your account. There's no easy way to see when a friend last paid you, or to use that context to make a new payment.

Payments between you and your friends should belong together. With this in mind, we designed payments to be social, to be similar to WhatsApp, iMessage, or any other messaging platform

We also understand that not all payments are best viewed as a conversation. We recognize, for example, that you may have accounts on other banks, pay mortgages, or credit cards. So, it makes sense to treat payments to external accounts in other ways, which is why this kind of chat view is only used for payments between Warp Users.

Splitting the bills

Just picture the scene: You're sat at a restaurant with friends, you get the bill, and then either you spend more than you ate or you wait your turn to use the terminal... Not cool, right?

In a small company like Warp, sometimes the whole team goes for lunch together, everything is really good, until the time of the bill comes in. One of those times we started wondering, what if we could make something that made splitting easier?

We built Warp Split, a feature of the app that lets you split any bill, with any contact in your phone. It's free, instant, and eliminates the awkwardness of asking someone to pay you back!

Know when, where and who

How often are you left scratching your head trying to understand where your money went? Many times, your spending history can be confusing and difficult to recognize.

This problem was pointed out by our first beta users, we solved this problem by identifying many businesses out of the box, rather than shouting at you in ALL CAPS with obscure transaction descriptions we show the correct business name, logo, time, and location. This not only helps the user to identify his spending but also reduces the number of support calls we get because someone doesn't identify a transaction that they made.

We also categorize automatically all the payments, so that the user can understand how he's spending and in what areas he's spending more.

Cash Withdrawals

As a fintech company with no branches, the access to cash seems at first a disadvantage for the customers that use cash in their daily lives, especially in a country like Mexico in which the majority of payments are in cash.

We knew this was a major customer acquisition point because cash withdrawals were one of the most requested features by the beta users. The main challenge was to build an experience that worked frictionless in the app as in the physical world. Withdrawing from a bank didn't seem like an option, because they charge between $10-$20 to withdraw from a card that's not theirs, and because if you go in payday you'll just be like this.

We partnered with about 15,000 stores around the country to offer cash access, this is even more than all the bank branches combined. With Warp Cash, you can just go to a convenience store, show the attendant your withdrawing code, and receive your money. You don't know where the closest store is? No problem, just look in the map and it will show you all the stores around you that accept Warp Cash.