Multiple providers
Cashback, offers and gift cards were powered by different providers with different rules, timings and mechanics.
Case study
thinkmoney Rewards.
Bringing cashback, offers and gift cards into one simple experience that made the value of thinkmoney's paid accounts easier to see and use.
Role
Head of Design
Focus
Proposition, IA and UX
Contribution
Product strategy, journeys, testing and UI direction
Released
August 2026
Overview
Making the value of a paid account easier to see and use.
thinkmoney customers had access to several ways to save money, including cashback, offers and gift cards. But these benefits existed across separate experiences, making the overall value of the proposition harder to understand.
Rewards brought those benefits together into one destination, giving customers a clearer way to discover, understand and use the savings available through their account.
I led the design direction across the proposition, information architecture and customer experience, working with product, engineering, commercial and content to shape how Rewards worked and how its value was communicated.
The challenge
Customers needed to see the value of the paid account faster.
The existing experience expected customers to understand different reward types, providers and mechanics before the benefit became clear.
The challenge was to reverse that relationship: lead with the value to the customer, while keeping the complexity required to deliver it behind the experience.
The reality
A simple customer experience sat on top of a complicated product.
Existing behaviours
Existing customers already understood parts of the proposition, so the new experience needed to improve clarity without making everything feel unfamiliar.
Commercial flexibility
The product needed to accommodate changing partners, offers and future reward types without creating another fragmented experience.
Trust and transparency
Eligibility, timing and provider terms still needed to be clear and accessible without overwhelming the primary journey.
Information architecture
One destination instead of competing entry points.
Rather than presenting cashback, offers and gift cards as separate products, Rewards became the parent experience for discovering and managing ways to save.
Customers could browse opportunities, activate offers, buy gift cards and track their rewards without first having to understand which provider or mechanic sat behind them.
Journey design
Designed around customer intent, not internal product categories.
See relevant ways to save in one place.
Quickly understand the value, action and conditions.
Activate an offer, buy a gift card or use a reward.
See what is active, pending, earned or used.
Exploration
The design question was the mental model, not the UI.
Before designing individual screens, I explored how customers should understand the relationship between different ways to save.
That meant working through naming, grouping, browsing, activation, gift card purchase, pending rewards and history as parts of one connected experience rather than isolated features.
Qualitative testing
Testing the proposition, not just the interface.
I used moderated qualitative testing with six participants, five prospective customers and one existing thinkmoney customer, to test whether the Rewards proposition made sense before refining the experience.
Personalised cashback was seen as relevant and easy to understand, while placing Rewards inside the banking app helped build trust. Testing also exposed areas that needed work, particularly the distinction between cashback and gift cards, savings terminology and expectations around offer refresh and expiry.
Key design decisions
The findings translated directly into design changes.
Clarify activation
Make it obvious that once an offer is activated, customers simply pay with their thinkmoney card and cashback tracks automatically.
Distinguish gift cards
Strengthen the visual and written distinction between cashback offers and discounted gift cards.
Improve reward language
Use clearer terminology around cashback earned, gift card savings and total reward value.
Explain offer lifecycle
Give customers clearer expectations around new offers, expiry, refresh and ongoing availability.
Trade-offs
Making things simpler for customers moved complexity elsewhere.
Customer language over provider language
Different mechanics had to be translated into language that made sense as part of one customer proposition.
Consistency over bespoke journeys
Shared patterns reduced the individuality of each provider experience, but made Rewards easier to understand as a whole.
Value before detail
Saving and action came first, with conditions available close by rather than becoming the opening message.
Interface hierarchy
Lead with value. Support with detail.
The interface prioritised what customers needed to understand first: what the reward was worth, what they needed to do and whether it was relevant to them.
Timing, eligibility, provider information and terms remained accessible, but were deliberately secondary to the value and action.
Final experience
Rewards became one recognisable part of the product experience.
Outcome
Early adoption showed customers were finding and using Rewards.
27% engaged
13,696 of 51,158 monthly active customers engaged with Rewards within the first three weeks of launch.
2,441 activations
18% of customers who engaged went on to activate an offer, showing progression from browsing into intent.
850 transactions
390 customers generated 850 qualifying transactions, averaging just over two transactions per transacting customer.
Reflection
This project was less about designing a feature and more about shaping a proposition people would return to.
The most important decisions happened before the final interface: defining a clearer customer mental model, bringing disconnected benefits together and choosing language that made the value easier to understand.
Early behaviour after launch supported that direction. Nearly half of traffic in the latest week was from returning customers, while personalised offers were seeing activation rates of 20–35% compared with 2–14% for always-on offers. Customers were also returning to transact, averaging just over two qualifying transactions each.
It also gave the team a clearer next problem to solve. Around 2,000 customers had activated an offer but had not yet spent, creating an opportunity to improve post-activation communication and help more customers complete the journey.