Recent work

Remessa Online

Remessa
Online

Designing for a Global Financial Revolution

Crafting intuitive user journeys that break down barriers in wire transfers.

Overview

I had the opportunity to join Remessa Online, one of Latin America’s largest cross-border payment platforms, as Product Design Lead in 2016. During my time there, I contributed to the successful launch of the product and was later promoted to Head of Design, where I oversaw the scaling of design operations during a period of rapid growth. The company was eventually acquired by EBANX for $229M in 2022.

Challenges

Revolutionizing Cross-Border Payments
When I started, international money transfers were complex, expensive, and inaccessible to most people. My role was to transform the user experience, making it easy, intuitive, and affordable, which helped reduce the barriers that existed at the time.

Simplifying Complexity
I led efforts to ensure that both individuals and businesses could use the platform effortlessly, focusing on simplifying the cross-border payment process to make it more user-friendly and transparent.

Scaling the Design Team
As Remessa Online grew rapidly, my challenge was to scale the design team to match the company’s growth. Over three years, I built a team of 12 designers from scratch, focusing on keeping the quality high while ensuring we met the demands of the business.

Stakeholder Management
With the company’s growth came more stakeholders and increased investor pressure. One of my key responsibilities was managing these relationships, aligning expectations, and ensuring that design initiatives contributed to both user satisfaction and business goals.

Key Projects

Designing User Journeys for International Transfers
I led the design of user journeys for both individuals and businesses, focusing on making registration, transfers, and fund receipt as seamless as possible. This had a direct impact on improving user conversion and retention.

Conversion-Focused Acquisition Channels
I oversaw the creation and optimization of acquisition channels, including the main website, ensuring they were aligned with our growth objectives and designed to maximize conversion.

User Journey Optimization
One of my key projects was optimizing critical user flows within the product to improve onboarding and transaction processes, which resulted in higher engagement and reduced churn.

Results & Impact

I built and scaled the design team from the ground up, growing it to 12 members in three years.
Led the implementation of a new brand system while optimizing key user journeys, which significantly boosted conversion and recurrence metrics.

We contributed to major KPIs such as:

Registration Volume: Increased sign-ups through improved user flows.
Transaction Volume: Increased the number of remittances and overall transactional volume.
Upselling Opportunities: Developed additional services to enhance customer value.
Conversion Funnel: Reduced drop-offs at key stages of the user journey.
LTV (Lifetime Value): Improved customer retention, contributing to long-term business value.

Learnings

Design as strategy
Design can directly drive business outcomes. By enhancing user flows and acquisition channels, I saw design’s impact on conversion and retention.

Balancing growth and quality
Scaling while maintaining quality required a clear hiring process, collaborative culture, and structured design operations.

Customer-centric solutions
Simplifying cross-border payments taught me to always view challenges from the customer’s perspective, enhancing usability and trust.

Stakeholder alignment
Aligning with stakeholders was key. Frequent updates and linking design to KPIs helped secure buy-in.

Data-driven design
Tracking metrics like conversion and drop-offs informed design decisions, ensuring continuous improvement.

Prioritizing simplicity
Complex products benefit from clarity. Streamlining experiences became a guiding design principle.

Resilience under pressure
This was my greatest learning for today, though at the time, it was a real struggle. I often felt I fell short, facing challenges in balancing pressure with team well-being. While it wasn’t easy, these experiences shaped my resilience and understanding of what sustainable leadership truly requires.