Making Money Move: How to Make Complex Systems​ in FinTech Feel Simple

Most of us have grown used to the quiet magic of digital money. You tap your phone to pay for groceries, send your half of dinner to a friend, or watch your direct deposit land exactly when you expect it to. Everything feels seamless, almost routine, and the entire experience fades into the background.

FinTech’s greatest achievement is the way it hides that complexity and turns a labyrinth of systems, checks, and regulations into something that feels effortless. It is an illusion built with engineering, product thinking, and design working in unison. That illusion is also fragile. When it cracks, the user feels it immediately. And that is the paradox at the center of FinTech today: How do you make something so complex feel effortless, and trustworthy, for millions of people who don't care how it works? Only that it does?‍

On this episode of Product Builders, we sat down with Paul Unterberg, Chief Product Officer at Uphold, who has built financial products at some of the industry’s biggest names — PayPal, Prudential, and now a global crypto-enabled platform serving millions. His perspective reveals how teams craft simple experiences from deeply intricate foundations, and what it means to design for trust in a world that never stops moving.

Money is Becoming Invisible, but the Stakes Have Never Been Higher

When Paul describes Uphold, he doesn’t lead with technology or technical terms. He talks about giving people the ability to move money in a way that feels natural, predictable, and fast. This is striking because most users are not asking for innovation. They are asking for confidence. 

People want to move and manage money with the same immediacy and confidence they expect from any modern digital experience. And that expectation has changed dramatically over the past decade. Mobile banking normalized real-time visibility. Crypto introduced new ways to store and transfer value. And global platforms made moving money internationally feel increasingly attainable.

At the same time, the emotional weight behind these interactions hasn’t diminished. Unlike social feeds or e-commerce browsing, a financial action carries consequences. A failed transaction can spiral into anxiety. A delayed deposit can trigger panic. Reliability is not a feature in FinTech. It is the baseline that makes every other feature possible.

As Paul puts it:

Designing for FinTech shouldn’t feel different from the apps people use every day. The difference is the stakes.

People expect consistency and clarity, and meeting those expectations requires significant orchestration behind the scenes.

Designing Simplicity in a System Built on Complexity

FinTech UX looks simple, but only because everything complicated is hidden behind the curtain. A user-friendly financial app should not feel any more complicated than the social or productivity apps people use every day. The difference is that, in FinTech, the stakes are higher. When you work with money, there is no such thing as a harmless error.

Users want to understand what is happening without questioning whether their money is safe. This is where FinTech design becomes a discipline rooted in psychology as much as it is in technology. A new loading message, an extra signal that something is processing, or a clearer breakdown of the steps taking place can make someone feel far more in control. These cues help reduce uncertainty and maintain trust, especially when outcomes are time-sensitive.  What looks like a trivial change on the surface often reflects significant strategy and foresight beneath the surface.

This is the particular challenge of FinTech: clarity must be intentional. Transparency must be designed. Confidence has to be earned one interaction at a time.

Innovation You Feel, Not Always See

Innovation in FinTech often happens quietly. It rarely shows up as a dramatic new feature. More often, it emerges as an improvement that the user never notices directly, but benefits from profoundly: modernizing a settlement system, upgrading an aging banking connection, or coordinating with regulators to approve a new method of authentication or transfer. These improvements rarely show up on the front end, yet they make the entire experience more reliable. And what users notice is that something suddenly feels smoother, faster, or more predictable.

Innovation is that blend of doing something new in a way that doesn’t compromise the user’s current experience.

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In other words, no one applauds when a payment rail gets modernized.  No one posts a TikTok when regulators approve a new settlement method.  No one tweets “cool!” when a banking partner upgrades their reconciliation system. But those invisible upgrades are what let users experience:

• Faster payments
• Fewer errors
• Lower fees
• Less friction across borders
• More transparency and control

This also becomes more complicated when scaling globally. Different regions have their own financial norms, regulatory bodies, and expectations. A product that feels intuitive in the United States might require a completely different approach in Europe or Asia. Maintaining consistency without flattening cultural nuance is a delicate balance that requires constant collaboration among design, engineering, compliance, and local market experts.

Where AI Fits into the Future of FinTech

FinTech has relied on machine learning long before the rise of today’s large language models. Fraud detection, risk modeling, and anomaly analysis are foundational applications that have been in use for years. What has changed is the acceleration effect AI now provides. It helps teams build faster, test faster, interpret signals faster, and adapt experiences more intelligently.

‍Paul described AI as a force multiplier. It does not replace human teams, but it gives them leverage. The result is a financial ecosystem that can respond to users with more precision and speed than ever before. While users may not see these changes directly, they experience the benefits through smoother interactions and fewer moments of uncertainty.

The Real Work: Building Trust One Interaction at a Time

The most valuable insight from our conversation with Paul is perhaps the simplest. Modern fintech does not win by being clever. It wins by being trustworthy. 

FinTech succeeds when it earns trust consistently, in moments both big and small. Trust comes from clarity, predictability, and empathy for the person on the other side of the screen. It is reinforced by every confirmation message that feels reassuring and by every transfer that behaves exactly as the user hoped it would.

The most successful FinTech products will be the ones that understand this human element better than anyone else. They will avoid unnecessary complexity and focus on the quiet confidence people seek in their financial lives. When teams choose to design for trust, they design for longevity.

The Future Built on Trust

The future of money is not being driven by the next buzzword or breakthrough. It will be defined by the teams that deeply understand that behind every tap is a person trying to make sense of their financial world. FinTech succeeds when it honors that reality with clarity, consistency, and a deep respect for the role these tools play in everyday life.

If you are exploring this space or building something of your own, reach out. We love helping teams make the complex feel beautifully simple.