ABCoin App
Gold-backed digital currency & asset — spend, save, and own with community
Role
UI UX Designer
Timeline
2 Months
Industry
FinTech, Web3, Social Networking
Tools
Figma, Notion, After Effects, Claude
How it started:
“We need a gold-backed tokenized asset designed to combine the safest asset Gold with the usability of digital payments and foster a strong, stable, community-driven financial and socially ecosystem, with its own community and polling channels.”
— Patrick H. (Founder)
🔍 Understanding & Defining The Problem
Fiat currency inflates. Gold is safe but inaccessible and illiquid. Crypto is spendable but volatile. No platform bridges these gaps and none builds community trust around it.
Too many steps and middlemen to invest in gold, zero spending flexibility after
Gold savings and spending exist in separate worlds with no bridge
No dedicated platform gives people a real, transparent say on civic issues that affect them
Without community, a new financial product is just another app asking bank details
Vision we focused to target:
What if your money was backed by the gold (world's safest asset), could never be inflated, spent like cash, and grew inside a community that actually wants you to win?
— That's the question ABCoin was built to answer.
📊 Research Phase
Key insights from user’s data:
The data confirmed the gap, and revealed how large the opportunity actually was.
73% of people say they would invest in gold if it were as easy as a bank transfers (World Gold Council, 2023)
82% of gold holders hesitate to spend like daily transactions due to high liquidation fees and complex settlements. (World Gold Council’s Gold247 report)
3x higher retention with P2P marketplaces like classifieds apps when users also have a social profile tied to their account (Pew Research, 2022)
40% higher DAU in finance apps with embedded social features alongside financial tools (a16z Fintech Report, 2023)
Target audience personas:
💼 The Modern Saver - Mid-income professional | 20–45 years
Skeptical of crypto, knows gold is safe, but couldn't actually buy much. Wants simplicity and security above everything.🤝 The Community Builder - Socially motivated | 30–50 years
Wants to connect, share, and grow wealth collectively — outside traditional banking systems.
Competitive Analysis
Before moving forward, it was important to understand the industry landscape.
Feature | Jar / DigiGold | Coinbase / Trust Wallet | eToro / Public.com | ABCoin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Gold-backed | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Spendable / Debit Card | ❌ | Partial | ❌ | ✅ |
Community / Social | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
Marketplace | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Non-crypto | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Secured Onboarding and User Experience | Moderate | Complex | Moderate | Designed to be simple |
No competitor has combined gold backing, spending utility, community, marketplace, and civic voting in one place. ABCoin fills a category gap.
Product’s Strategies
Position ABCoin as a gold-backed digital liquidity ecosystem — not a savings app, not a crypto wallet. Start free, earn subscription through value, take small fees on vault-to-wallet conversions.
User:
Earn trust through clarity: Every financial action must be transparent and informed that feel safe before it feels fast.
Gamification: Reward with coins for joining bonus, voting milestones, and referrals reward
Simplicity First: Simplify the features by modules with one seamless feel and easy organization, keeping high familiarity to reduce learning curve.
Business:
Early Adoption: Keep onboarding free for early users and then get on a yearly subscription
Fees on vault ↔ wallet & Gold: Charge small conversion fees for vault and wallet, convenience fees for delivering physical gold
Promotions: Marketplace and Feed Boosts for businesses (Phase 2)
Business: Payment gateway wallet (Phase 2)
Ideated Solutions
Five distinct modules, designed to feel like one coherent product.
ABCoin Wallet: Real-time value, P2P transfers, debit card spend, invest to Gold Vault
Gold Vault: Auto-invest ABCoins, withdraw as physical gold, convert back to wallet anytime
Marketplace: Verified P2P listings, in-app chat, seller reviews, and ABCoin payments
Community: Social profiles, feeds, groups, and forums tied to the ABCoin world
Voting Platform: Transparent civic polls with resource cards, feedback, and live results
If you wrap a gold-backed wallet inside a thriving social ecosystem, with community feed, groups, forums, peer-to-peer marketplace, civic voting, this becomes a living, breathing thing people choose to come back to every day.
Information Architecture
Organized five different modules without the app feeling scattered:
ABCoin & Vault, Social Community, Marketplace, Voting Polls, Profile-Settings.
User Flows
Mapped the key flows first, so every friction point was found before any pixels were placed.
Design System
Have created a scalable and versatile design system to use on different products of ABCoin.
Design
Moodboards:
We chose to go with blend of formal and modern subtle styles (1 & 2) for engaging and trustworthy experience.
Wireframes (Mid-Fidelity)
UI Designs
Onboarding module with guide and key screens of the flow.
Voting (home) module with monthly questions with resources to vote and its live results.
Community module with feed, discover people, groups, and forums screens
Marketplace module with sub-category, listing details, and add new item screens
Account module with ABCoin wallet, transactions, and debit card details screens
Gold Vault module with vault details, redeem gold, convert, and order details screens.
Other referrals, Profile, forum discussion, product details screens
Design Decisions — UX challenges that shaped the product
The Dual Wallet Mental Model
A combined dashboard card showing just total balance made users conflate the spendable wallet with the gold vault — two very different risk profiles and intents.
So I gave each wallet its own individual flow and screens, visual identity, and a single explicit conversion action between them
Reduces the cognitive load in first place for users leading with clarity
Makes path for future scalability of both individual features, preventing future learning curve
KYC Identity Verification Without Drop-Off
Identity verifications felt like compliance friction — users saw bureaucracy, not benefit, and tends to abandon mid-flow.
Reframed KYC as user protection (not compliance), with one action per step and a persistent progress bar. Every screen reduced to a single decision.
earned trust with informing the purpose of each details on every screen
made aware of its benefits how this makes this platform genuine filtering fake profiles
Five Modules, One App
Five distinct feature areas risked feeling like five disconnected mini-apps bolted together.
Unified all modules via shared design language + cross-module hooks — social post links to marketplace listing, reward coins on voting that flows to wallet, user profile linked with wallet
it kept the experience cohesive and streamlined with simple navigation
Community In Finance App
Initial instinct was to de-emphasize community so it "doesn’t distract from finance” but data showed it drives retention.
As research showed social features drives retention with engagement, we gave community equal navigation weight; tied forum content around the ABCoin so finance and social reinforce each other.
increases the retention with more engagement by networking with each other
Outcomes
ABCoin answers a question the market hasn't solved:
Can gold be as easy as a debit card, as social as familiar platforms, and as trustworthy as your bank?
High onboarding completion through faster and easier KYC experience
Reduced onboarding steps from 9 to 5 steps — saving 40% time & efforts from industry avg.
Real-world utility through seamless debit card and QR integration
Debit card + QR given by default — zero extra steps to real-world spend and savings from day one
Easy adoption of ABCoins through a fastest flow that takes less than a minute
ABCoin purchase/investing completes under 1 minute within 3-4 taps — compared to an 6-8 step industry norm across competing platforms
Gold Vault engagement by autopay adoption, removing the "I'll do it later" exit
Auto-invest vault designed to convert the #1 drop-off moment in gold savings apps into a passive, recurring behaviour
Increased community participation by familiar social patterns and cross-module hooks
Cross-module design targets 40% higher DAU — backed by a16z data on fintech apps with embedded social
