Overview

UPI has made payments frictionless in India, but saving and investing still require conscious effort. While observing spending patterns among early career professionals, I noticed a recurring gap: people want to save, but struggle to do it consistently.

This whiteboarding case study explores whether small, automated savings linked to daily UPI transactions could help users build better financial habits without changing existing behavior.

Role: Product Designer Type: Exploratory whiteboarding case study Focus: Product thinking, research synthesis & decision making

Problem Statement

Young professionals rely heavily on UPI for daily payments, yet savings remain intentional, irregular, and easy to postpone. Most investment products require deliberate action, creating friction for users with inconsistent saving habits.

Design challenge:

“How might we embed savings into an already habitual behavior such as UPI payments while preserving trust, flexibility, and user control?”

Research Summary

I ran a short survey with 30 respondents, primarily aged 18 to 34, who actively use UPI.

Key insights

UPI is used daily, making it a strong behavioral anchor
Cashback and rewards strongly influence payment behavior
Most users save money, but savings are not automated
Many were open to micro investments such as ₹500 per month if control and clarity were maintained
Users preferred simple, clean interfaces over heavily gamified ones

Known gap:

Comfort with saving a percentage on every transaction was not fully validated and was treated as a key risk moving forward.

Early Exploration and Constraints