Building the global OS for borderless living - telecom meets fintech

River is an immigrant-centered Telecom company whose aim is to make connectivity affordable for global citizens and those who can't do so through traditional means. The ask was to direct design of the core web and mobile application, as well as create a strong visual brand and effective marketing collateral. River has since pivoted to FinTech by becoming a global payments super app.

River is an amalgamation of several existing apps in the Telecom and FinTech space and therefore experienced the common problem of a non-unified design system. Started by a NYC Bengali team, it also borrowed from a more eastern UI pattern than a western one - which values utility over design.

In the initial startup phase I joined as the Chief Design Officer to help give the company more credibility in it's funding rounds. In this role I helped oversee our original app design and liaised with our offshore engineering team to build the product.

The outcome was a strong lean on brand identity through UI, which has since been the leading focus in the latest fundraising rounds - which successfully closed at $20M.

A more refined visual language

The resulting design was a collaborative effort between two initiatives: rebranding and UI design. I also spearheaded the River rebrand (seen below) which helped inform how the brand showed up in the product.

The River rebrand

Below are abstractions and graphics used by the River marketing team, in conjunction with the visual updates to the app. The biggest concern was a miss-matched effort to make the design output uniform but partnered with talented designers, we were able to execute the update all at once.