hashbank. one app for your whole financial life

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Most banking apps in Georgia

were built before crypto existed. Most crypto apps were built by people who forgot about rent. Nobody was building for the person who needed both.
hashbank

changes that. A mobile bank where your regular money and crypto live together, finally speaking the same language.
I was the founding designer. I built the design system from scratch, shaped the product from the first idea to launch, and took on the hardest parts: loans, crypto, and transfers, until they felt effortless.

ROLE

Sr. Product Designer

TIMELINE

27

Months

TEAM

4 Person

OUTCOME

4.8

Store rating

ROLE

Sr. Product Designer

TIMELINE

27

Months

TEAM

4 Person

OUTCOME

4.8

Store rating

Background

Georgia's banking apps were outdated. Crypto exchanges felt like they were built for traders, not people with rent to pay. Nobody had brought both worlds together in one place.

hashbank set out to change that. Not by adding a crypto tab to a banking app, but by rethinking what a Georgian bank could feel like. From the ground up.

I joined as a founding designer before a single screen existed.

Problem

Managing money in Georgia meant managing apps. One for your bank account, one for crypto, one with a decent loyalty program, another just to pay utility bills. Four apps to do what one should.

The cost was time and confidence. Nobody wants to jump between three screens to move their own money. And for anyone not already deep in crypto, buying your first Bitcoin felt like slaying a dragon: export from your bank, find a bridge, navigate an exchange, hope nothing breaks along the way.

People didn't need more apps. They needed one that finally worked.

3

apps to move money into crypto currency

3

apps to move money into crypto currency

~70%

of adults in Georgia actively use banking apps every month

~70%

of adults in Georgia actively use banking apps every month

4 to 5

products the average banked Georgian manages across separate apps monthly

4 to 5

products the average banked Georgian manages across separate apps monthly

What I did

24 months. Every screen, every flow, every edge case that stood between a Georgian user and their money.

My job was finding the middle ground between what the business needed to ship and what a real person actually needed to feel. Loans, crypto, onboarding, cards, payments, each piece had to feel like it belonged to the same product and the same person.

The design system that made all of this possible lives in a separate case study. This one is about what got built with it.

Design system case study

Loans

Most loan flows are built around the bank's process, not the user's anxiety. Fill this form. Answer these questions. Wait. Hope.

The real problem wasn't the form length. It was that users didn't know what to ask for. Request too much and get rejected. Request too little and leave money on the table. Nobody wanted to guess wrong, so many didn't try at all.

We threw out the standard flow entirely.

Instead of starting with a request, we flipped it. The first thing a new user sees is "Check your credit limit." Two taps, a few consents, and within 30 seconds you know exactly what hashbank can offer you. No forms, no guessing, no fear of rejection. You already know the answer before you ask the question.

The edge cases were brutal. Overdue payments, prepayments, full early repayment, partial payments — every scenario needed its own logic and its own designed state. None of it visible in the final product. All of it felt.

Within 3 months of launch, over 400 users had taken a loan through hashbank.

Crypto

Most people who opened hashbank had never bought Bitcoin in their life. Not because they didn't want to. Because it felt like something that wasn't built for them. A different world with different rules, a different language, and a very intimidating dragon guarding the entrance.

The design challenge wasn't the technology. It was trust. How do you make someone who has never touched crypto feel like they already know what they're doing?

The answer was embarrassingly simple. Make it look exactly like their bank account. Same layout. Same buttons. Same logic. If you know how to send GEL, you already know how to send BTC. Buy, sell, exchange right at the top, where everything important lives. No buried menus, no wallet addresses on the first screen. Crypto stopped feeling like a different world. It felt like another tab.

But the part I'm most proud of is this. New users never had to make the first move. hashbank's loyalty program paid cashback in Bitcoin — small amounts, but real ones. So by the time someone opened the crypto tab for the first time, they already owned BTC. It came from the air. They were already crypto holders without doing a single scary thing.

The dragon was already dead before they even met it.

Results

24 months, four redesigns, one product that actually shipped. Here's what happened when people started using it.

4.8

Average rating maintained across the App Store and Play Store.

4.8

Average rating maintained across the App Store and Play Store.

80%

Component parity between iOS and Android platforms

80%

Component parity between iOS and Android platforms

<20s

Average time to send money via contacts within Georgia.

<20s

Average time to send money via contacts within Georgia.

31%

Monthly retention rate for users holding crypto assets.

31%

Monthly retention rate for users holding crypto assets.

~60s

Average time for users to set up their first deposit from scratch.

~60s

Average time for users to set up their first deposit from scratch.

24.6%

Monthly retention for users who personalized their savings goals.

24.6%

Monthly retention for users who personalized their savings goals.

Key Takeaways

The biggest hurdle wasn't the UI it was the jargon gap. We realized that as builders, we understand the mechanics, but users do not. Success came from answering unasked questions and translating complex banking logic into human-centric actions.

The Atomic Design System was a strategic business asset, not just a component library. Building it early gave the business the agility to re-brand in days and launch features in weeks. I treated the design system as a technical engine that directly drove business efficiency and cost savings.

Executing two full redesigns taught us that architecture must be fluid to survive growth. We prioritized scalability over perfection, ensuring that as the product grew from zero, the system remained stable and intuitive. I focused on building a flexible foundation that allowed the product to evolve without technical or visual debt.