ANKA, Gen Z UPI Payments & Wealth Mobile App | Case Study

Project Overview

A payments app that refuses to sell your attention.

Real-time spendable clarity, built on UPI rails

ANKA is a Gen Z-first payments and wealth mobile application for India, built on UPI rails. It re-engineers financial anxiety into real-time spendable clarity. "Safe to Spend", with automated N-1 group expense debt resolution and a zero-ads dark design system in Material 3 Expressive and Jetpack Compose.

Three things were fixed before anything was drawn: the home screen would carry one number rather than forty tiles, group debt would resolve on the ledger instead of in a group chat, and the business would never be allowed to earn a rupee from a user's attention.

RoleLead Product & Systems Designer

Timeline2026

CategoryFintech · Consumer UPI

PlatformAndroid · Jetpack Compose · Material 3

Ads or scratch cards

Permanent tabs

N‑1

Group settlement

100%

Tabular figures

The Challenge

The incumbents built a bazaar. Gen Z needed a tally.

Four problems the category had stopped treating as problems

PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm process billions of monthly UPI transfers, but every incumbent optimises for the transaction while monetising user attention. Home screens are packed with 40-tile bazaars, scratch cards and ad banners. Meanwhile 22-year-old Indians transact eight to fifteen times daily and carry constant low-grade money anxiety.

40-tile bazaar clutter

Incumbents overload screens with credit offers, commerce tiles and scratch cards that feel like a noisy bus station.

Money anxiety and false balances

Static bank balances mislead users into spending money that is already committed to upcoming bills and rent.

Awkward group debt follow-ups

Splitting group bills forces manual math and pairwise transfers at N² complexity, causing social friction.

Single-PSP outage failures

Single-bank PSP outages account for the majority of one-star payment app reviews in India.

The Solutions

Two features nobody else has.

Plus one constraint treated as a feature

ANKA introduces two product wedges designed to eliminate financial anxiety and simplify social payment workflows, and a third decision, about navigation, that only looks like a feature once you have used the alternatives for a year.

Innovation 01

Safe to Spend engine

Problem. Current apps show static account balances, misleading users into overspending before bills hit.
Approach. Calculate upcoming committed outflows, rent, SIPs, EMIs, and divide remaining cash by days left in the month.
Output. "₹19,240 to last you 11 days. That's ₹1,749 a day."
A forward-looking daily spend limit changes financial behaviour from anxiety-driven guessing to clear, daily boundaries.

Innovation 02

Circles, N-1 debt resolution

Problem. Group bill apps require manual calculation and multiple pairwise transfers across members.
Approach. Pay the merchant, swipe the row, and requests go out. Multi-party debts automatically resolve in N-1 transfers.
Output. Group debts settle in single-tap transfers without awkward reminders.
Math is solved at the ledger level, removing social awkwardness and reducing transaction friction.

Innovation 03

Four permanent tabs

Problem. Incumbent navigation changes constantly as new monetisation features are added.
Approach. A permanent four-tab architecture, Pulse, Circles, Pay, Wealth, organised by time relationship to money.
Output. Zero fifth-tab expansion. A fifth tab is treated as a product failure.
Organising by the user's mental model ensures predictability and long-term brand trust.

UI Overview

Four tabs carry the whole product.

Each one replaces a fragmented financial task with immediate clarity

Pulse

Present state.

The primary home surface, carrying the Safe to Spend daily limit, committed outflows and a live payment feed.

Problem

Users don't know how much money is genuinely spendable today.

Approach

A single hero spendable number, calculated against upcoming commitments.

For the user

Instant daily clarity; the overspending anxiety goes away.

For the business

A daily habit without artificial engagement gimmicks.

ANKA Pulse · the home dashboard with the Safe to Spend figure

Circles

The social ledger.

Group expense tracking, trip tallies, flatmate bills, with automated N-1 debt resolution.

Problem

Splitting bills requires awkward manual math and multiple individual transfers.

Approach

A single payment swipe triggers instant requests; the ledger computes N-1 transfers.

For the user

Debts settle without anyone having to send a reminder.

For the business

Viral acquisition through multi-party group invites.

ANKA Circles · group expenses and single-tap debt resolution

Pay

The frictionless rail.

A high-speed camera QR scanner, a recent-contacts tray, and a custom tactile amount keypad.

Problem

Camera initialisation lag and slow keypad entry cause merchant checkout friction.

Approach

Hardware-accelerated QR scanning and a tabular keypad with spring haptics.

For the user

Sub-second launch to completed payment.

For the business

Maximises successful UPI checkout completions.

ANKA Pay · the tactile amount keypad with rolling tabular numerals

Wealth

Future state.

Goal-based micro-SIPs, consolidated net worth, inflation tracking and passive accumulation.

Problem

Gen Z avoids complex investment platforms with high-pressure sales jargon.

Approach

Simple goal rings, automated roundups and transparent AUM fee disclosure.

For the user

Long-term wealth without the financial jargon.

For the business

High-margin AUM revenue with no advertising dependency.

ANKA Wealth · goal rings, micro-SIPs and a net worth tracker

Design System · "Tally"

Volt on Ink. Dark by default.

A spice, never a sauce · 5 to 8% of any screen

Nobody in Indian fintech owns Volt on Ink. PhonePe is purple, Paytm and Airpay are blue, Google Pay is multi-colour on white. Volt covers strictly 5 to 8% of any screen, a high-contrast spice, never an overwhelming sauce.

Volt accent#CCFF00

Ink substrate#0B0C0E

Dark charcoal#16181F

Volt glow#E6FF66

Secondary#99A1B3

Coral alert#FF6633

Anek

One variable family covering ten Indian scripts and Latin, so a Marathi balance and an English one are set in the same voice.

₹1,749.00

Tabular figures are mandatory on every balance and ledger row, tnum everywhere, so columns never jitter as digits change.

Money has mass

Spring physics, stiffness and damping, rather than duration-and-easing curves. Completed amounts land on ledger rows with real overshoot.

Material 3 Expressive substrate

Built on M3 Expressive Compose components, custom-themed with Volt/Ink tokens and twelve custom financial primitives.

Zero-ad brand constraint

A founder-level veto on sponsored tiles, scratch cards and third-party ads. Revenue comes strictly from AUM, credit interchange and MDR.

Architecture as trust

Double-entry ledgers and multi-PSP failover redundancy, so that when a payment is made it works every single time.

Screens

Every surface, end to end.

Click any screen to open it full size

Pulse dashboard

Safe to Spend daily limit and the live payment stream.

Circles ledger

Group expenses and single-tap N-1 debt resolution.

Pay keypad

Tactile amount entry with rolling tabular numerals.

Wealth overview

Goal rings, micro-SIPs and the net worth tracker.

Safe to Spend detail

The committed-outflows calculation, broken open.

Profile & security

Linked bank accounts, security and Quiet Mode.

Onboarding & setup

The Gen Z welcome flow and handle binding.

Physics motion lab

Spring stiffness, damping and mass parameters.

Outcomes

Designed for trust. Engineered for speed.

Consumer fintech without dark patterns

ANKA proves that consumer fintech does not require dark patterns or attention-selling to build a sustainable business. The system prioritises user clarity over commercial noise.

Ads or scratch cards

Zero attention-monetisation clutter on any surface.

N‑1

Transfer efficiency

Automated group debt settlement, reducing pairwise friction.

100%

Tabular numeral alignment

Pixel-perfect numeric columns with no animation jitter.

Permanent tabs

Predictable navigation, organised by time relationship to money.

Key Learnings

What this project taught me.

Clarity reduces financial anxiety

Showing a static balance makes users nervous about hidden upcoming bills. Calculating genuinely disposable cash turns that anxiety into confidence.

Numerals are the primary content

Financial UI lives and dies by numeric legibility. Enforcing tnum tabular figures across ten Indian scripts in Anek was non-negotiable.

Restraint builds premium brand equity

Volt at 5-8% density on Ink created an identity that instantly separates ANKA from the blue and purple incumbents.

Architecture dictates user trust

Double-entry ledgers and multi-PSP failover redundancy are what make a payment work reliably every single time.

Reflection

"The single constraint that defined ANKA was refusing to monetise attention. Every incumbent app in India eventually turns into a 40-tile bazaar of scratch cards, credit ads and sponsored banners. By keeping the surface dark, permanent and focused strictly on Safe to Spend clarity, ANKA gives Gen Z something money apps forgot to offer, peace of mind."

Rupesh Chavan, Lead Product & Systems Designer

DesignerRupesh N. Chavan

Year2026

ProductANKA, Safe to Spend

DisciplinesProduct Design · Design Systems · Fintech UX