Pace

Overview

Pace Transfer is a global digital dollar wallet designed for people who live, work, and move across borders.

Built for the diaspora, digital nomads, and individuals managing money internationally, Pace allows users to hold dollar-denominated value through USDT and transfer funds to recipients in approximately 130 countries.

With support for local payout methods, including bank transfers and mobile money, alongside digital cards for online payments, Pace brings essential international financial services into one accessible experience.

1. Market research
3. Positioning
5. Trade-offs
7. High-fidelity design
9. Engineering handoff (final decision)

The Problem

The cross-border payment space is already crowded. Numerous platforms allow users to send money internationally, convert currencies, and manage payments across different markets.

The challenge wasn't introducing another way to transfer money. It was creating a simpler, more focused experience around what users actually needed.

For people managing money across borders, the underlying financial processes can be complicated. Different currencies, payout methods, identity requirements, and transaction processes introduce decisions that users shouldn't have to navigate unnecessarily.

Pace's proposition was deliberately focused: give people a way to hold value in dollars and move it into supported local currencies whenever they need to.

The design challenge was translating that proposition into an experience that felt just as simple as the idea itself.

How do we build a financial product that offers global flexibility without overwhelming users with features, navigation, and unnecessary decisions?

The Solution

We approached Pace with a clear product principle: make the essential actions immediately accessible and keep everything else out of the way.

Rather than competing on the number of features available, the experience was structured around three core capabilities:

• Hold dollars: Maintain a dollar-denominated balance without managing multiple currency wallets.
• Move money globally: Send funds to supported destinations, with Pace handling the underlying currency conversion and payment processes.
• Pay online: Use digital cards to make online payments wherever supported.

The objective was to create a predictable experience regardless of where users were sending money or which local payout method they selected.

This principle influenced everything from account creation to the home screen and transaction flows.

Instead of exposing the technical complexity behind global payments, we focused on giving users the information and actions required to make confident decisions.

Design Process

01. Research & Product Positioning

Pace entered an established market with recognizable product patterns and strong competition.

Rather than approaching the project as an opportunity to reinvent familiar financial interactions, I focused on understanding what existing platforms were doing well, where unnecessary complexity existed, and which patterns could be simplified for Pace's specific proposition.

I reviewed comparable wallet and international transfer products, examining their onboarding experiences, navigation structures, balance presentation, and transaction flows.

The research helped establish a critical distinction: Pace didn't need to become an all-in-one financial super app.

Its value came from doing a small number of important things exceptionally well.

This became the foundation for my design decisions.

I prioritized reducing unnecessary choices, limiting competing actions, and making the primary user journeys immediately understandable.

Three areas shaped the experience.

02. Rethinking Onboarding Around User Intent

Onboarding was one of the first experiences I challenged.

Traditional authentication flows often require users to decide whether to sign in or create an account before they can proceed.

While familiar, this introduces a decision the system can make on the user's behalf.

I designed a unified entry point that begins with a single request: the user's email address.

From there, the system determines the appropriate next step.

• Existing users are directed to authentication.
• New users continue into account setup, including creating their security credentials.
• Identity verification is introduced during onboarding or can be completed after entering the app, with access to relevant financial features dependent on verification requirements.

By removing the initial sign-in versus sign-up decision, the experience becomes more direct.

Users don't need to understand which authentication path applies to them. They simply provide their email, and the system guides them through the appropriate flow.

This was a deliberate design decision: reduce cognitive effort by allowing the product to handle decisions it already has enough information to make.

It also meant balancing a low-friction entry experience with the security and identity verification requirements expected of a financial platform.

03. Designing a Home Screen Around Essential Actions

The next challenge was deciding what users should see once they entered the app.

With a product that supports balances, transfers, transactions, digital cards, and additional account activities, it would have been easy to introduce multiple navigation destinations.

I chose a more focused approach.

Rather than spreading essential functionality across several primary tabs, I structured the experience around one central home screen.

The information hierarchy prioritized what users were most likely to need:

• Wallet balance: Immediate visibility into available funds.
• Primary financial actions: Clear entry points for adding, sending, and managing money.
• Transaction activity: Easy access to recent financial movements.
• Digital cards: Visibility and access to online payment capabilities.
• Secondary features: Referral and supporting account functionality without competing with core financial tasks.

Every element needed to justify its place on the screen.

The goal wasn't to display everything the product could do. It was to ensure users could quickly understand their financial position and identify their next action.

This required carefully balancing information density, visual hierarchy, and discoverability.

The fewer decisions users need to make to complete a task, the more effort the product should invest in making those decisions clear.

04. Iteration, Trade-offs & Engineering Collaboration

The initial experience established the foundation, but the design continued evolving through collaboration with engineers and key stakeholders.

As we moved from concepts into implementation, we revisited interaction patterns, evaluated technical considerations, and refined parts of the experience to accommodate product and operational requirements.

Not every design decision could remain unchanged.

Some interactions required compromises between ideal user experience patterns, development constraints, and the practical requirements of running a financial product.

My responsibility was to evaluate these trade-offs without losing sight of the underlying experience we wanted to create.

Rather than treating simplicity as a purely visual objective, I approached it as a product-level decision.

This meant questioning whether additional features needed to be immediately visible, whether certain steps could be deferred, and where system logic could replace unnecessary user input.

Working closely with engineering throughout the process helped ensure that decisions were not only desirable from a user perspective but also practical to implement and maintain.

Outcome & Reflection

The first version of Pace established a focused digital wallet experience built around three essential needs: holding dollar-denominated value, moving money internationally, and making online payments.

By simplifying account entry, consolidating essential activities into a central home screen, and prioritizing clear financial actions, we created a foundation designed to support the product's core proposition without unnecessary interface complexity.

The project reinforced an important principle in my approach to product design:

Simplicity isn't achieved by removing features indiscriminately. It's achieved by understanding which decisions matter to users and designing the system to handle the rest.

In a market where many products compete through feature expansion, Pace challenged me to think more critically about restraint, prioritization, and the value of designing less.