Q2 - 2025
My role: Product designer
My partners: Engineers, PM, EM, Head of brand
Using Spendesk’s shift to a licensed banking institution to launch a multi‑use virtual card (time‑ and budget‑bound) aimed at travel and short‑term projects.
Three months post‑GA, multi‑use virtual cards drove €2M+ in spend with ~200 cards created per week, validating travel and short‑term project use cases.
Led end‑to‑end design, including analyzing misuse of existing cards, defining the new card type, reworking mobile navigation, and refreshing card visuals.
As Spendeks evolved its payment infrastructure by becoming a licensed banking institution, expanding our card offering represented itself as a strategic opportunity to better serve our users’ diverse spending needs and increase card-related revenue for the business.
The PM and I launched a discovery to uncover the possible directions a new card product could go in. We started by doing research on how our users were using our current card types and what our competitors were doing.
During discovery, I made an audit of our current card types; physical, recurring virtual, and single-use virtual, to see if there were any patterns that would show some user needs we weren’t yet aware of. Through some patterns I saw of users using their cards in ways they weren’t intended for, I was able to identify two use cases: travel, and short term projects. We also saw that a staggering amount of physical cards were not being used, resulting in lost operational costs for Spendesk.
Based on competitor benchmarking, historical feedback from users, the results of a survey, and spending patterns, we identified two card types that seemed to be viable options to answer some user needs – a virtual-only version of the physical card and a virtual card that is based on a defined time limit and budget. Based on dependencies to other features (such as Apple and Google pay), and an opportunity we had identified to convert up to 2M euros per month in travel expenses, we decided to focus on the second option, which we called the multi-use card.
In design, the existing mobile experience proved to be a challenge when it came to incorporating the new card type. The current navigation was not scalable and needed to be rethought to enable users to find and manage their virtual cards better. To rework the navigation, I worked closely with the mobile engineers to understand proper mobile navigation and behaviours.
Card visuals
While we were doing our discovery for the feature, the brand and product design teams were working together to refresh the brand identity and the UI of Spendesk. This presented a good opportunity to also refresh the identity of the cards, which were proving to not be scalable enough to add the new card type. To redefine the card visuals, I explored different options, using iconography, color, and patterns to guide the user to different card types. Testing results showed that iconography and pattern were too ambiguous and weren’t clear enough for all markets. I decided to go with a version using our brand gradient as the visual, which has been well received by users and has helped to unify the visual identity.
Three months post-GA, users have spent over 2M euros using multi-use cards, with an average of 200 cards being created each week. Their usage patterns have also verified our assumed use cases, with many cards being issued for travel, trade fairs, and events.
The next steps for the multi-use card will be to iterate based on early feedback. I have also begun to work with the Travel & Expense squad, who are building a travel feature for which the multi-use card is critical. This is expected to further boost adoption numbers. In parallel, we will start the discovery on the virtual only card based on the positive feedback we have from the multi use card and the trending bias towards virtual-based cards.
