Case 03 · PayBridge · BOK Financial
Designing a paycheck advance that switches itself off.
No post-launch metrics — I moved off at launch. The evidence here is what shipped, and what survived review.
Two fronts for the bank one bind for the customer.
A regional bank was losing direct-deposit primacy and overdraft income to neobanks — while its paycheck-to-paycheck customers were stuck between overdraft fees and payday loans. The fix was itself a high-cost product: a paycheck advance at roughly 130% APR. I was the sole designer across seven flows and three platforms in a quarter, and the real job wasn't making the advance easy — it was making a high-cost product honest enough to trust and hard enough to abuse. The centerpiece was a cooling-off period that pauses the product for its heaviest users. I proposed it; the bank shipped it.
The product — a walkthrough
The journey — four stages
- 01Understand
Cost leads — the 5% fee is shown before any benefit.
- 02Advance
$60–$1,000, with the fee calculated live as you choose the amount.
- 03Repay
Auto-deducted from the next qualifying direct deposit.
- 04Cool off
Three months at maximum pauses the product — with a warning a month ahead.
What I owned as the only designer.
Sole designer on a six-person team — a PM, three platform developers, a technical analyst, and me. One quarter, ideation to launch. I owned the disclosure language predominantly, with legal and compliance support; in banking, legal always holds final sign-off, and the honest version of that claim is the stronger one.
Ownership
Owned end to end
All 7 flows across iOS, Android & Web · The four-limit guardrail system · The cooling-off proposal · Disclosure language & placement (predominantly)
Ownership
Shared
Disclosure wording & final sign-off (with legal & compliance) · Feasibility (with the three platform developers and the technical analyst)
Ownership
Handed off
Platform implementation · QA
Ownership
Not owned
Credit, fee & risk policy · Post-launch performance (moved off the project at launch)
The conditions that shaped every call.
A product that had to admit it was expensive — the constraint most designers never face.
Constraint
A product that had to admit it was expensive
5% over 14 days is roughly 130% APR — a triple-digit, high-cost product. The constraint most designers never face: I had to design something that tells the user, clearly and first, that it costs a lot.
Constraint
Regulation set the floor, not taste
Structured as an open-end line of credit, it sits under TILA / Reg Z — finance-charge and APR disclosure, periodic statements, change-in-terms notices. The Military Lending Act caps covered servicemembers at 36% MAPR (fees included), so the 5% fee is waived for them. The guardrails had to be legally exact.
Constraint
One designer, three parallel builds, one quarter
Seven flows across iOS, Android and Web, ideation to launch in about twelve weeks, with one developer on each platform and no second designer. A shared pattern set wasn't a preference — it was the only way to keep three builds coherent at that pace.
Three decisions carried a product that had to be honest about being expensive.
Three decisions carried a product that had to be honest about being expensive: where the guardrails lived, how the product warned before it restricted, and how many times the cost got shown.
Design the guardrails, not just the flow
Debt-cycle architecture · the cooling-off proposal
The signal
The category's defining criticism is the debt cycle — over 80% of payday loans are re-borrowed within two weeks. Treating repeat use as an engagement metric would have made this product exactly what regulators criticize.
Options considered
Why rejected
A frequency-maximizing design is the payday model with a bank's logo on it. A single soft cap is theater — easy to design around and easy to ignore.
Why chosen
Four limits that make heavy repeat use structurally hard. The cooling-off period was my proposal — adapting a mechanism that already exists in several state payday-lending statutes into a bank product that wasn't required to have one. A product that switches itself off for its most frequent users, at a bank whose stated goal was replacing lost overdraft income. I proposed adapting it; I didn't invent it — and the accurate version is the one that can't be picked apart.
Verdict
A product that switches itself off for its heaviest users — proposed by me, shipped by a bank that needed the revenue.
Warn before you restrict
Anti-dark-pattern · warn before you restrict
The signal
A limit that lands with no warning reads as punishment — and punishment feeds the shame the research says makes people hide from small debts. The dangerous version of this pattern already exists in the market.
Options considered
Why rejected
Any restriction that arrives silently, and any urgency-manufacturing nudge that pushes another advance. That playbook is exactly what this product exists to refuse.
Why chosen
Advance notice a month ahead, a non-punitive tone in every limit state, and a support number on every screen. The product warns you it's about to stop you — restriction delivered without shame.
Verdict
Same category as the dark patterns, pointed the opposite way.
Show the cost three times, in three forms
Reg Z floor · authorial placement
The signal
Competitors surface cost once, at the moment of least resistance. Reg Z requires the fee be disclosed; it does not require it be the first thing you read.
Options considered
Why rejected
A single confirmation-screen disclosure is compliant, and it's the moment of least resistance. Disclosing once clears the law; it isn't honest.
Why chosen
I owned the disclosure language, with legal and compliance support — so both the wording and the placement were mine to argue. Leading the landing page with the 5% fee, above line size, repayment terms, no credit check and no late fees, was an authorial choice, not a regulatory requirement. And the fee stays a separate line item (−$100 Advance, −$5 Fee) in history, so the user always sees what they borrowed and what it cost.
Verdict
Reg Z says disclose the fee. It doesn't say make it the first thing you read. I did.
Craft decisions that carried the three beats.
Five supporting choices — one line each. They keep the three beats readable without becoming beats of their own.
- 05.01
Cost before commitment
The fee is calculated live under the amount picker, updating as you scroll — visible before any confirmation screen, not after it.
- 05.02
One disclosure component, everywhere
The fee disclosure is a single reused component across every surface. Consistency of disclosure is itself responsible design — and the only way one designer kept three platforms coherent in a quarter.
- 05.03
Opt-out in plain sight
‘Opt out of PayBridge’ sits as a full-width row on the Manage account screen — plainly visible, not buried in a support-ticket flow. The confirmation spells out exactly what ending access costs, then lets you back in.
- 05.04
Systematized across three platforms
One pattern set held iOS, Android and Web together; platform divergence appears only where a decision actually changed, never for its own sake.
What shipped and what survived review.
I moved off the project at launch, so post-launch performance isn't mine to report — and I won't substitute a soft claim for a number I don't have. What is verifiable is what shipped: seven flows across three platforms, one quarter, one designer, ideation to launch.
And what survived review. The cooling-off period — a feature that pauses the product for its highest-frequency users — was my proposal, argued through legal, compliance, and product at a bank whose stated goal was replacing lost overdraft income, and it shipped intact. So did the disclosure position: the 5% fee leads the landing page, above every benefit. Getting a bank to ship a revenue-reducing consumer protection is not a usage metric, and I won't dress it as one — but it is an outcome.
No post-launch metrics
The evidence is what shipped, and what survived review.
I moved off at launch, so post-launch performance isn't mine to report — I won't substitute a soft claim for a number I don't have.
Shipped
7 flows · 3 platforms · one quarter
Intact
Cooling-off period survived legal, compliance & product review
Fee-first
5% disclosed above every benefit
“The category's model: make repeat borrowing frictionless.”
“This one: disclose the cost first, warn before the wall, and switch itself off.”
What PayBridge taught me about designing high-cost products.
- P.01
Guardrails are a design surface, not a compliance afterthought.
The limits, the warning, the tone in every restricted state — where a product tells someone ‘no’ is exactly where it earns or loses their trust. I designed those states as carefully as the happy path.
- P.02
Disclosed once is compliant; disclosed honestly is a choice.
Reg Z sets the floor: disclose the fee. Showing the cost three times, cost-first, above every benefit, was the authorial part — and the part that made the product trustworthy rather than merely legal.
- P.03
A more responsible high-cost product is still a high-cost product.
Every guardrail here reduces harm at the margins; none of them changes the fact that the people using it are paying ~130% APR because they have no cheaper option. Saying that plainly is the difference between senior judgment and product advocacy.
If I could measure one thing, it'd be whether the guardrails actually worked: overdraft incidence among users versus non-users, how often the cooling-off period really triggered, and repayment success on the first direct deposit. Knowing exactly what evidence I lacked is its own kind of rigor — and the next version of this product should be built to prove it.