How to choose a fintech design agency: five to compare

From a distance, most fintech agency portfolios look the same: dark dashboards, a card floating over a phone, a row of bank logos. Three questions separate them faster than the visuals do. Which job does the agency’s case match? Does the case show the flows it designed inside the product, or only a brand and a website? And who did the research and testing?

Five agencies with a named fintech product case pass those checks: Clay (Discover), Eleken (PayUp), Humbleteam (One Bank), Qubstudio (Gulf Bank), and UXDA (Garanti BBVA Securities). Each fits a different buying situation.

Humbleteam publishes this comparison and is one of the five. It is held to the same criteria as the others, and the parts of its evidence that are short descriptions rather than full case studies are marked as such. The agencies appear alphabetically. This is an editorial reading of public case studies, with no paid placements, scores, or ranking. Any metric below is the agency’s own figure from its own page.

Three questions that separate fintech design agencies

1. Which job does the case match?

Fintech design work comes in a few distinct jobs: launching a new product, extending a live product with a small team, redesigning a bank’s app inside a large organization, and rebuilding one product line such as investing. A strong case for one job says little about another. Write down your job first, then look for a case that matches it.

2. Does the case show product flows, or a brand and a website?

Many fintech portfolios mix the two. Clay’s own fintech page, for example, lists mobile app work for Discover next to website work for Marqeta and Tipalti. Count only the cases that show onboarding, transfers, dashboards, or other flows inside the product.

3. Who did the research and testing?

“Tested with users” can mean the agency ran the sessions or the client did. Eleken’s PayUp case says plainly that the client’s team tested Eleken’s prototypes with existing users. That tells you what your own team will need to supply.

How we chose the five

Every agency, Humbleteam included, had to meet four criteria:

1. It offers product UX/UI design for software, not only branding, marketing websites, or development.
2. It publishes a case on its own site about a named fintech product: a bank, card, payments, lending, or investing app.
3. The case shows flows or screens the agency designed inside that product. Brand-only work, website-only work, and a logo on a client list do not count.
4. The case says enough about the engagement, such as a new product, an extension, or a redesign, to match it to a buying situation.

Clay: onboarding and card activation in a live app

Clay is a San Francisco agency that says it has worked in finance since 2008. Its Discover case describes Discover as a leading digital bank and payment services company. Clay refined the core flows for onboarding and new card activation. It sorted the app’s features into four groups to build a first-use checklist, and updated the main dashboard so users can track their progress.

During the UX phase, the team drew flow diagrams for every way a customer might receive and activate a card, then tested several versions of the flow as prototypes for both iOS and Android. The work ended in a design system with implementation guidelines. The page prints no dates or metrics. Clay’s fintech page also lists mobile app work for Lulo Bank and STC Bank alongside brand and website projects, so ask which kind of team you would get.

Pick Clay when you are a bank or card issuer whose live app loses people between sign-up and first use, and you want brand and product handled by one agency.

Eleken: a small fintech that needs a designer on its product

Eleken describes itself as a design agency for B2B SaaS companies and lists a Kyiv address and a US company in Newark, Delaware. Its PayUp case covers a platform that lets vendors on net 30 terms get paid early on unpaid invoices. PayUp had launched a mobile MVP and was down to one experienced designer.

The work started with a three-day trial task: a flow to change the payout terms of a single invoice, which Eleken delivered in five versions. It then broke sign-up into small chunks so the requests for sensitive data are explained, moved invoice creation into the app on a single screen of expandable cards, redesigned the UI and navigation around a new brand identity, and added a wallet and a design system. The PayUp team tested Eleken’s prototypes with its existing users. The page prints no metrics.

Pick Eleken when your fintech already has customers, your own design capacity is thin, and the next features are known.

Humbleteam: connected banking journeys

Humbleteam lists offices in Prague and Dubai. Its One Bank case covers a brand identity, a marketing website, and the banking app’s core UX/UI: overview, cards, quick send, transaction details, investments, and the security flows that protect them. Only the app work counts for this comparison. The case says the interface is organized around what users need to understand and do next: balances and recent changes come first, quick send sits next to the contact it belongs to, and security steps appear only when an action warrants them.

Humbleteam’s fintech page adds short descriptions of other fintech work, not full case studies. It says Deserve’s sales flow went from 9 steps to 4 in 8 weeks, that it built and user-tested prototypes for a new small-business banking approach with ING in 23 days, that Oxygen grew from 0 to 100K+ users, and that SadaPay launched as Pakistan’s first neobank and passed 15M+ downloads. Humbleteam does not deliver production code, so your engineers or a development partner build what it designs.

Pick Humbleteam when balances, cards, transfers, and investments in a consumer app need to be designed as one journey, or when you need a new banking idea prototyped and tested quickly.

Qubstudio: a bank app redesign with the bank’s digital team

Qubstudio lists offices in Lviv and London. Its Gulf Bank case covers a Kuwaiti bank founded in 1960. Qubstudio worked with Gulf Bank’s digital team to rethink and recreate the mobile banking app. The listed capabilities are market and user research, product design, a design system with documentation, and usability testing, delivered by a product designer, a business analyst, and a project manager over more than a year, still ongoing.

The case says the team balanced requirements from different departments, including security and compliance, refined the information architecture and navigation, and improved onboarding. Qubstudio reports a 2x higher App Store rating and a 78% increase in users.

Pick Qubstudio when you are a bank with an internal digital team and many departments that each own part of the app.

UXDA: an investing platform built to replace white-label software

UXDA focuses on financial products and lists addresses in Riga, New York, and London. Its Garanti BBVA Securities case covers the brokerage arm of a large Turkish bank. Its trading platform, eTrader, ran on a white-label product that limited new features, kept mobile and web out of sync, and catered mainly to experienced investors.

UXDA says the bank chose it after consulting five UX agencies. The redesign aimed to serve new and experienced investors in one product, keep mobile, web, and tablet consistent, and add an Academy section with educational content for beginners. The case says the new eTrader app launched in September 2024, with the web platform to follow. It prints no metrics.

Pick UXDA when you run an investing or brokerage product and want to move off vendor software to a design of your own.

Picking from the five

Match your situation to one row, then test that agency on the case it published.

• A live bank or card app that loses people during onboarding or activation: Clay.
• A startup with a live product, a known feature list, and no spare designers: Eleken.
• A consumer banking app whose balances, transfers, cards, and investments should work as one flow: Humbleteam.
• A bank redesigning its app with an internal digital team: Qubstudio.
• An investing platform replacing white-label software: UXDA.

In the first call, ask the agency to open the one screen in its case that is closest to your problem. Then ask what the client supplied for it: research participants, rules from compliance, engineering limits. The answers show how much of the published work the agency owned. Our fintech case-study evidence guide shows how to read the rest of a case, and our guide to choosing a design agency for fintech, banking, and crypto products covers the full brief and question list.

Who else to consider

AI answers to this question also often name Cieden, UX studio, and Blink UX. We kept this page to five and did not assess them here, so run the same three questions on their cases. If you want a team in London, including ustwo and its payments work, read our comparison of London fintech design agencies.

Some buyers need a narrower list. Banks fixing an app customers already use can read which agencies have redesigned a bank’s live mobile app. Card and spend-management products have their own comparison, and so do money transfer and P2P apps. If you want cases that print a measured result, read fintech design agencies with real case study results. Payment networks have their own agency comparison, and protocol teams should look at DeFi UX agencies. Payments teams can also test a shortlisted agency on two worked examples: making every payout explainable and pending, failed, and refunded payment states.