Leading the establishment of a data-driven design culture while pushing one of Latin America's first bitcoin credit cards

Bipa is one of the easiest ways to buy bitcoin in Brazil — offering free withdrawals and automatic currency conversion to crypto. Launching a bitcoin-based credit card widely available to the masses was the next step.

I was brought in as Product Design Lead to build and lead the design department, connecting marketing and engineering under a unified design strategy.

1. Context

The organization had no concept of design disciplines being separated. Product, software, brand, and graphic design were all "pixels" at the end of the day. There was no process, no ownership, and no distinction between a marketing banner and a product feature.

The first step was not designing. It was restructuring how the company thinks about design.

I started by proposing a fundamentally different approach: splitting tasks and conversations into product design and brand design as distinct verticals, each with their own goals, processes, and outputs.

2. Clarity

Pushed for early OKRs, defining the vision of the design vertical and what it could become with more resources. Clear ownership, clear metrics, and clear direction.

Five key results set the foundation: deliver the credit card MVP, inspire a design culture at the company's core, collect and analyze behavioral data, establish a unified design language, and create interactions that blur the edge between design and engineering.

3. House Cleaning

Design system organized at a foundational level, with dark and light themes switching automatically in Figma for rapid prototyping. Tokens aligned between design and engineering from day one.

Colors, typography, button tokens, and 121+ variables structured across primitives and semantics. Every component built to scale — not to survive, but to accelerate.

4. Ground Base for Data-Driven Design

Explained in meetings and team gatherings that design is not an art based on taste. It is a science based on data. A behavioral analytics pipeline needed to exist before any meaningful design argument could be made.

This process was different from any design craft. It was bureaucratic, but necessary. I researched B2B tools that offered behavioral tracking across iOS, Android, and desktop web.

Evaluated UXCam, Fullstory, and Smartlook, comparing session replay retention, analytics depth, mobile support, and pricing. Scheduled demos, discussed budget with finance, and secured final approval.

The goal was not just analytics. It was earning trust for future design arguments through data.

5. Analytics in Action

With the behavioral analytics tool enabled, we could now address specific pain points: pages with errors, slow connections, rage clicks, dead clicks, and places where the experience had friction that was invisible before.

1,822 daily users. 3,523 sessions. 1,202 dead clicks. 322 network errors. Every number became a design argument.

For the first time, the design team could point at evidence instead of opinions.

6. Design Team Flow

Now it was about execution. A small design team pushing product, marketing, and brand, with a moving system and a pipeline of behavioral + usability data feeding every decision.

7. Execution — Brand

With the system in place and data flowing, brand deliverables started shipping at a pace the company had never seen.

Social media — posts unclogged and released on a consistent cadence. Educational content, market comparisons, and halving campaigns, all designed and measured.

Marketing pages — a website rollout with heatmap tracking and session analytics overlaid. Something that had never happened before.

Bipa Cast — a podcast that took a solid run, growing a technical audience. I designed the branding scheme and episode identity system.

8. Execution — Product

Features were designed and handed off seamlessly to engineering, each informed by behavioral data.

Bills Payment — allowing users to pay bills directly in bitcoin. Barcode scanner, confirmation flow, success state. End-to-end in the design system's dark theme.

Affiliate Program — users recruit others and earn rewards. Full journey mapped from empty state through invite generation, QR code sharing, and earnings tracking.

With the team structured, the design gear shifted. Things were moving fast and organized — pushing forward the credit card designs as business negotiations happened in parallel with engineering developing the app.

9. Onboarding & App Experience

The onboarding journey brought the use of the base design system aligned with engineering through Figma tokens — dark and light mode automatically built as the designer only focuses on one theme.

The flow progressed through card invitation acceptance, Bipa Turbo cashback activation, collateral-based credit allocation, contract signing, and personal data confirmation, all in a step-by-step progressive disclosure that reduced cognitive load.

Secondary colors in buttons, custom sliders, custom animations, intermediary states, and 3D components were all built on top of Figma components, making it seamless for any future designer to pick up.

The use of 3D components was new to the company. The engineering team had to coordinate with design to get specs on implementation.

10. The Credit Card

Early ideation started on paper, exploring how the Bipa brand could live on a physical card: bitcoin iconography, logo placement, typography, and notch positioning.

Moved to digital. Concepts were designed and iterated. We wanted something clean and modern, but customizable enough that the user could feel it was their own.

We ended up with a version voted internally by the whole team as the base for the first demo card.

The card featured an exclusive spec: a cut notch on the bottom, part of Mastercard's accessibility program for card issuers. In Brazil, Bipa was one of the first to offer this, creating a tangible design differential.

$satoshinakamoto embossed on the front. A nod to the origin. A signal to the community.

I took some time to visit the credit card manufacturer in Sao Paulo, check their options in materials and embossing; They received me and my colleague as honored guests as we took a tour after receiving dozens of samples.

11. Mastercard Homologation

The next step to get approval from Mastercard was to finalize the main app screen designs and submit them for homologation — their design team verifying ours.

Card dashboard, virtual card management, PIN entry, credentials view, Apple Pay integration, contactless toggle, and card blocking were all designed, reviewed, and documented.

All screens were encapsulated in an 18-page document named MASTERCARD DIGITAL FIRST and submitted for homologation.

Enrollment, provisioning, payment functionality, authentication protocols, card management, alerts, controls, terms, and benefits: every required scenario covered and verified.

12. Building the Hype

A video explaining the app was produced and released through social channels.

13. Learnings

Working with Bipa was an incredible experience — pushing projects with talented people while leading and crafting at the same time. From a confused design process to a data-driven team shipping a bitcoin credit card through Mastercard homologation.

The playbook: structure the team, instrument the product, earn trust through data, then ship relentlessly.