The U.S. immigrant banking experience is highly fragmented with immigrants using separate services for credit, checking, and remittance. Even for U.S. immigrants who are highly credentialed, starting a high-paying job at an elite company, or are a millionaire in their home country, it is very difficult to get a loan in the U.S. as an immigrant. Stilt (YC '16) is solving these issues for U.S. immigrants and has been giving loans to them for 4 years. In the spring of 2020, they brought me on board to lead the design of their new checking account app, which has tightly integrated credit and remittance features.
I designed an "all in one" banking experience for web and mobile to increase immigrants' access to credit and remittance in a single checking account. Throughout this process, I focused on achieving Stilt's goal of increasing loan volume.
Product Design
Product Management
Collaborators
Since I am not an immigrant myself, it was important to understand the U.S. immigrant banking experience. Doing so allowed me to identify audience specific features and create an intuitive user experience for people who lack a basic understanding of the U.S. banking system. I conducted user interviews across a pool of over 30 immigrants (who had previously taken a loan from Stilt) to understand Stilt's customers and determine their web and mobile banking needs. Initial user interviews focused on general banking questions, but over time I refined my list of questions to ones that delivered the most insights into an immigrant's banking experience.