We Took This FinTech Gaming Startup from level 0 to the top of the leaderboard

“webuild's thoroughness and level of detail in their work makes them a wonderful collaborator. Their designs are incredibly organized, which allowed our weekly discussions to be efficient and focused.”

Neon VC Stakeholder

Neon is only recently out of stealth mode, but we’ve been working with them since 2022.

fintech Startup

seed stage

founded 2022

They grew with lightning speed from an idea to a fully fledged reality. Their goal is to disrupt the gaming industry, making mobile game development more accessible and creating a future which is more fun for gamers overall.

That’s an ambitious goal, but achievable when you combine a genius team from some of the best tech giants in the industry — and partner with webuild for all your design needs!

Start Game

Neon’s plan to transform mobile gaming looks like an umbrella of services, including a payment system (NPay) and ecommerce — which became their MVP.

The Neon umbrella features management support services for game developers, including a CRM, capital & cash flow management, analytics services, and more.

Taking their work to the players themselves, Neon is also developing expanded services for gamers through their direct-to-consumer Super App.

The app integrates data and gameplay experience across multiple mobile games for players. They can play in P2P challenges, get custom rewards, view their aggregated game balances, stats, and achievements, discover new games, and even set parental controls for little gamers.

Like many other hypergrowth, early-stage startups we have worked with, Neon was sharp, ambitious, hardworking — and drowning in great ideas. Our job as their agency partner was to make those dreams real, without sacrificing quality or integrity for speed.

Order summary screens become more simplified when users check out with NPay.

Bright marketing to catch interest.

Clear UI helps users quickly fund their wallets.

Leveling Up

We started with the MVP launch of Neon, NPay. It needed to include:

Storefront of game items and bundles for a mobile game, which could easily be customized to the tone and SKUs of any game type
Way to pay which felt safe, fast, and helped educate users sign-up for Neon easily
Clear reason to use Neon, instead of a competitor payment system We began that process with a research-first approach and collaborative workshops with the client to determine their needs.

We began that process with a research-first approach and collaborative workshops with the client to determine their needs.

UX/UI Market Research

In order to execute on the three goals above, we explored best practices across the three markets which NPay would span: fintech, B2B SaaS, and (the most fun) mobile gaming. We needed to identify how mobile gamers interacted with their devices, when they were incentivized to purchase, and data points which they cared about when evaluating whether to complete a purchase.

Evaluating fintech, B2B SaaS markets, and mobile gaming helped us identify how mobile gamers were interacting with their devices and which data points they cared about when deciding on whether or not to purchase.

We evaluated top mobile games on the marketplace, ran through their gameplay (not a bad way to spend a Monday morning), and explored payment prompts, checkout flows, and pay confirmation experiences. We learned a lot, and it inspired a game addiction in our researchers — the sounds of Candy Crush still echo in our Zoom calls.

However, payment and shopping experiences in mobile gaming…aren’t great. Poor UX, glitchy dev, and inaccessible UI meant we needed to look elsewhere for inspiration on effective mobile payment solutions.

We created intuitive PDP screens, where a user could tap in and scroll through a carousel to explore bundle contents.

The tone of the storefront needed to fit - regardless if the game felt more ‘Animal Crossing’ or ‘League of Legends’. It also needed a consistent format which a user could navigate regardless of what they were playing. We found a balance through customizable color palettes, fonts, shapes, and light mode.

We created intuitive PDP screens, where a user could tap in and scroll through a carousel to explore bundle contents.

Our team’s industry knowledge in fintech came in handy. We were able to access past repositories of payment research, as well as our own designs for other checkout experiences. We considered what could be applicable to mobile gamers (high security and speedy experiences) and which might not (too many bells and whistles crypto purchasing, limited payment plan ability, vertical-only orientations, etc).

Finally, we brought payments and gaming together with our experience with other startups dealing with business-to-business software, such as payment administration. For questions on how to manage payment disputes, navigate digital wallets, and technically plug into a games existing design, we learned a lot from app designs before us.

All of this design was rolled into best practices recommendation and brought to the Neon team for their evaluation and consideration.

*Note: These screens were designed as prototypes and are not yet real representations of game partners.

Our FigJam that helped us align with Neon on style & tone for NPay.

Workshops

We hate useless meetings — though, who doesn't? And while we were able to accomplish much of our work asynchronously, we arrived at the point where we needed to collab in real time. This critical stage is exciting! We take the bucket of research and turn it into viable MVP design.

Our producer ran a series of workshops to review research, align on style and tone, and critically assess the scope and needs of each portion of NPay to influence the shape of the design.

Multiplayer Mode

Now that we had a strategy in place, it was time to get to designing. At webuild, we never design in a silo. Our designers met continuously in huddles, video walkthroughs, and live weekly meetings with the Neon leadership and the development team to create a design which was functional, buildable, and matched their goals. Over 4 months, we created a pretty great MVP. We’re designers, so we’ll let the screens speak for themselves.

You’ve made a great purchase! It might help you win that next level! Celebrate that win with a happy order confirmation which is clear and joyous.

Who doesn’t love a “try before you buy?” By allowing users to complete a Neon purchase, learn about the platform along the way, and experience for themselves how easy it is, we see higher success rates. That's where sign-ups are the way to go. They are a simple way to communicate, "You're done! Now just save your details."

And it doesn't stop in-app

We designed partner emails and marketing assets like the ones below to remind the user that their next easy purchase (and victory) is just a click away.

The Next Boss Level

We’ve been Neon’s agency partner for over five months now, and seen them grow from a team of 4 to hiring their first product manager, in-house designer, and locking in customer #1 for NPay. We’re in awe of what they have accomplished — and are sure that you are as well.

So what’s next for Neon? Well, the Super App is in design, the next iteration of the MVP is in development, the design system is getting buttoned up, and the future of Neon (and mobile gaming) is looking bright.