Designing an in-app loyalty program that incentivizes borrowers to build better financial habits — and keeps them coming back.
Tala gives people in emerging markets immediate access to credit, loans, and a full financial account across the Philippines, Kenya, Mexico, and India. But it was losing ground to competitors offering loyalty programs, referral bonuses, and lower fees — and retention was suffering.
The deeper problem was behavioral: users who engaged with multiple Tala features had significantly better loan repayment rates and churned less. The opportunity wasn't just to match competitors on perks. It was to make healthy financial behaviors feel genuinely worth doing.
My goal: design a rewards program that turned good financial habits into something users actually wanted to do.
Before committing to a full program, we needed to validate one core assumption: would incentives actually change user behavior? I partnered with the PM and researcher on a focused test — offer a reward for depositing money into a Tala account and measure the response.
The result: a 30% increase in account deposits. That signal was enough to greenlight a full investment in a robust rewards program.
Designs used in the initial proof-of-concept test
With validation in hand, the team aligned on a clear north star: multi-product engagement would be the lever — rewarding users for depositing, repaying, and transacting across Tala features. Success was defined upfront with three measurable targets:
From there, I worked with the PM to scope the MVP into three core user journeys — keeping scope lean enough for a developer-constrained team to ship.
I conducted a competitive analysis of loyalty programs in the Philippines, working closely with our local researcher to identify patterns in apps users already trusted, and usability pitfalls that were driving abandonment.
Competitive analysis of loyalty apps in the Philippines
The early iterations had a core hierarchy problem: it wasn't clear where the eye should land first, and rewards were buried behind too many taps. I went through two full rounds of the home screen and redemption flows before moving to user testing.
Iterations 1 and 2 — rewards home page
Early iteration — reward options, details, and redemption flow
After two rounds, the hierarchy still wasn't landing. I restructured around one principle: show users what they could earn before asking them to do anything.
The biggest comprehension risk was onboarding. Would users understand what Tala Rewards was before they hit the home screen? I added an intro screen to set expectations upfront — so rewards feel like a destination users navigate to, not a feature they stumble into.
The home screen needed to lead with aspiration, not obligation. Token balance is pinned at the top with high-contrast treatment so it's always the focal point. A featured rewards carousel comes immediately after — showing users what they're working toward before presenting the activity list that tells them how to get there.
The redemption CTA needed to work at both token states. If a user had enough tokens, the button invited them to redeem. If not, it disabled gracefully with a message showing the gap — keeping motivation intact without creating frustration or dead ends.
Three additional flows completed the experience: entry point placement, browsing all rewards, and viewing activity details.
View all rewards · Redemption flow · Activity details
I ran a moderated usability study with 14 users in the Philippines — 7 mature borrowers (10+ loans) and 7 casual borrowers (1–3 loans) — to pressure-test two core hypotheses before shipping.
VALIDATED ✅ No major comprehension issues across either segment.
VALIDATED ✅ Clear signals of intent to trial cash-in, bill pay, and early loan repayment.
After testing, I made one naming change that reduced confusion at scale: "tokens" became "points." Users came in with expectations set by other apps, and familiar language lowered the learning curve immediately. I then partnered with Tala's brand and systems team to finalize designs against the newly completed design system.
Research is the most expensive thing to skip. Designing for the Philippines without a local partner would have produced something that felt foreign to the people we were designing for. Our researcher wasn't supplemental — she was foundational to everything from the competitive analysis to the credibility of our user testing.
Working without a design system taught me to make every component decision explicit. Each choice I made under ambiguity eventually needed to integrate into a system. That discipline made me a better contributor once the system was ready — and a stronger advocate for design systems in general.