Designing a banking app that grows up with you
The Brief
FNB Youth wanted a standalone youth banking app, not a simplified version of adult banking, but something built from scratch for kids. The product needed to serve three distinct age cohorts: 5–9, 10–13, and 14–17, each with different cognitive abilities, motivations, and needs. The goal was to make financial literacy feel like something kids actually want to engage with.
My Role
I’m leading the end-to-end experience design on this project, collaborating with the Youth Accounts team and Interface X while owning the design direction throughout. From defining the experience framework across age cohorts to shaping the gamification system and the Money Buddy concept, this is a project I’m building with both strategic intent and design craft.
The Challenge
Three age groups sounds simple until you’re designing for all of them at once. A 6 year old and a 16 year old are essentially different users different reading levels, different motivations, different relationships with money and autonomy. The design had to evolve meaningfully across those stages without feeling like three separate products. Layered on top of that was the parent control dynamic, giving adults meaningful oversight without making kids feel surveilled and building a gamification system that genuinely enhances the experience rather than distracting from it.
The Concept
The app is built around a central character that evolves alongside the child creating a sense of continuity, personalisation, and genuine emotional investment across the entire youth banking journey. Gamification is woven into the core experience, not bolted on, turning financial habits into something kids are intrinsically motivated to return to
Status
This project is currently in design. The vision is live, the product is coming.