Credit Sesame · Director of Design · 2019–2021
From checking a score to changing it.
I authored the strategy that turned a free-credit-score app into a bank, then led the first product that could raise a member’s score directly. This is that product, screen by screen, and the decisions behind it.
- Role
- Director of Design, reporting to the COO
- Team
- 10+ incl. two managers; product marketing and a product manager reported to me
- Period
- 2019–2021
- Company
- Consumer credit platform, millions of members underserved by traditional credit
Contents
Starting point · 2019–2020
Ten years old, and still just a score.
Credit Sesame gave millions of people a free credit score and a marketplace of other companies’ offers. Most members checked the number and left. The business needed them to stay, and the members needed something that actually moved the number.
The pivot
I wrote the case for becoming a bank.
Executives were already circling the idea. I authored the strategy and presented it to the COO, was moved into the COO’s reporting line, and joined the M&A team evaluating neobanks. I led the product strategy for how banking would fit into the app before any of it was designed.
What shipped first
Sesame Cash: a debit account inside the credit app.
Launched on a partner bank: home screen, funding, activation, and every pending and recovery state. It passed a million customers within a year.
- 01Strategy to the COO
- 02Banking integration designed
- 03Sesame Cash launched
- 041M+ customers in year one
- 05Adoption lagged
- 06Product marketing moved under me; conversion doubled
The second problem
Launch isn’t adoption.
Existing members were slow to open accounts. Product marketing moved into my organization, with a product manager to implement the work, and conversion of members into banking customers doubled, validated by experiment.
Which left one question
Could the app change the score itself?
Every improvement so far sent members to a third party. The next product had to work on the score directly, using the thing members already wanted to do: start saving.
The overview · 2021
Sixty-five percent were logging in just to look.
The production overview showed a score and almost nothing else. The redesign kept the score where members expected it and put the next action directly beneath it.
Mocks shown are mine. Production design by the team.
The redesign
Every screen earns an action.
Score, potential score, and one line that turns a balance into a credit move: “Secure part of your balance to improve your credit.”
The pitch
Lead with the benefit members named, not the mechanism.
In research, two things mattered: how many points, and how soon. The promo says both and nothing else. Branding, marketing and legal all had opinions; the benefit stayed first.
The offer
It’s a secured card. It doesn’t look like one.
The members we served live paycheck to paycheck. Parking money is a big ask. The product had to ride on the desire to save, and the interface had to say so.
The words
Twenty-five dollars a month. Then a line of credit.
The explainer is as explicit and down to earth as I could make it: what you save, when the credit line appears, that it is free, that the money stays yours. I drafted this copy and the research prompts that shaped it.
The display
Show the balance like savings, not like credit.
The differentiator is that members are saving, and the account is presented that way: a balance that grows, beside the debit account, with no credit-card framing anywhere on the screen.
One month later
The card shows up after the habit does.
Nothing in the first month mentions spending. A virtual card is layered on after thirty days, so the first experience is saving and the second is a score that moved.
Sequencing
Deposits first. Transactions later.
Holding the card back reduces cognitive load at sign-up and gives the member a reason to come back. By the time it appears, there is a balance, a direct deposit, and a bill-reporting row waiting underneath.
The unlock
A score lift, then a card that reports everything.
Members wanted every debit transaction to count toward their credit, with no extra effort. A virtual card that debits from the checking account does exactly that, and arrives as a congratulations rather than a feature.
What I took from it
My job was to make the hype survive contact with the member.
Internally this was a big deal: the first product that improved credit without sending anyone to a partner. Making it good meant questioning assumptions and letting research set the numbers.
Invented from research, shipped through disclosures.
My organization took the feature from the first interviews to the regulatory copy. I owned strategy, product direction, UX, content and the visual approach; the designers on my team carried production.
Strategy, then the product that proves it.
The banking pivot was a deck. Sesame Cash made it real. The credit builder made it worth logging in for.
Strategy
The case for becoming a bank, presented to the COO.
Product
Sesame Cash, on a partner bank, to 1M+ customers.
Habit
A savings-secured credit builder with a card as the reward.
The score was the hook. Saving was the habit. The card made the habit count.
Plastiq, end to end →