Toss Bank Shifts International Remittance Benchmark from 'Fees' to 'Reducing Anxiety'

Toss Bank Product Designer Seo Ja-young determined that the team's existing goal of 'low fees' might not align with actual user needs when launching the international remittance feature, so she conducted user interviews. The interviews revealed that users felt greater anxiety about the remittance process than concern over fee differences, stemming from the opacity of not knowing where their money was.

Team's Paradigm Shift

Instead of persuading the team, the designer encouraged members to experience international remittance firsthand. When the PM sent money to the UK, they observed that the status remained ambiguously marked as 'normal remittance' for three days, sustaining anxiety. Consequently, the team changed the product benchmark from 'how cheap is it' to 'how anxiety-free is it'.

UX Improvements to Alleviate Anxiety

To reduce anxiety before and after remittance, the following features were introduced:

• Input Validation: When entering bank codes, the actual bank name (e.g., JP Morgan Chase) is displayed immediately to alleviate anxiety about typos.
• Address Autocomplete: Integration with a map API simplified the entry of complex local addresses and improved accuracy.
• Simplified Status Display: The complex internal 9-step remittance status was reduced to three easy-to-understand steps for users: 'Processing → Arrived at Foreign Bank → Completed'.

This project is evaluated as a case where a designer with limited domain knowledge shifted the product development benchmark to be user-experience-centric by directly asking users questions and enabling the team to experience the issues themselves.