Upward Credit Builder

Upward's direct-to-consumer credit builder helped people with little or no credit history, including many newcomers to the U.S., begin building credit. As we grew, we saw an opportunity to reach more of those same users through financial platforms they already used and trusted, such as money transfer services like Western Union. Instead of asking users to discover and download a separate credit-building app, partners could embed the experience directly into their existing products. The challenge was that our original product was designed for a single consumer brand and couldn't support multiple partners, each with different branding, entry points, and customer needs.

I started by identifying what made the original product successful: trust, transparency, and progressive disclosure. Those principles stayed. Everything else was redesigned for an embedded platform.

Research from the D2C product pointed to one major friction point: KYC. User interviews, surveys, and beta testing showed that newcomers to the U.S. often struggled with unfamiliar identity verification requirements while learning an unfamiliar financial system. I simplified those flows, removed unnecessary steps, reordered screens, and prefilled information from partner data wherever possible to make onboarding faster and more intuitive.

I also rewrote financial education and disclosure copy in plain language, balancing clarity with the credibility users expect from a financial product.

Beyond the product itself, I led onboarding for every new partner, worked with engineering to implement each brand, and served as the primary design contact throughout every integration.

The biggest challenge in this project wasn't the redesign itself. It was navigating the tradeoffs between partner flexibility, user experience, and long-term scalability. Those decisions shaped almost every part of the product, and reinforced that successful platform design is often about finding the right balance rather than the perfect solution.