Giving Everyone a "Black" Credit Card

I led a team of five designers at Casham, now known as Billet. Four members of the team were based in other countries, bringing different perspectives to a challenge deeply rooted in everyday Dominican life.

Our ambition was to help people move beyond cash through two connected applications: a digital wallet for individuals and an app that allowed businesses of any size to accept payments.

The people we were designing for had never held a bank account. We could not assume that familiar banking conventions would feel familiar to them.

We needed to build something they could understand, trust, and want to use.

Starting where people lived and worked

Research was central to the project. We visited more than 100 establishments, primarily colmados, the neighborhood stores that are part of daily life across the Dominican Republic.

We wanted to understand how merchants received money, organized their businesses, and relied on cash. The opportunity was not simply to introduce another payment method. It was to create something that could fit into the way they already worked and help make it easier.

That understanding shaped how I guided the team. Our decisions needed to respond to the realities we encountered, rather than assumptions about how a financial app should behave.

Making something new feel familiar

Onboarding was especially important. For someone opening their first financial account, the experience could not depend on knowledge they had never needed before.

We looked beyond banking for familiar mental models. Games, social platforms, and food delivery apps offered interactions our audience already understood. We used that familiarity as a starting point for making a new experience easier to navigate.

The same thinking extended to everyday needs: paying bills, receiving remittances, and withdrawing money. Our role was to make those actions understandable without requiring people to learn the language of banking first.

We also recognized that our two audiences often overlapped. Someone using the wallet for personal expenses might also earn their living through a small business. For people managing money day by day, those roles were closely connected.

We made moving between the personal and merchant experiences straightforward, reflecting that reality rather than treating them as entirely separate worlds.

A black card, with a different meaning

One of my most meaningful contributions came from a question beyond usability: what would make someone proud to choose this product?

Black cards carried a strong association with status and exclusivity. I saw an opportunity to give that symbol a different meaning by making our debit card black.

It was not about presenting it as a premium credit product. It was about challenging the idea that an attractive, desirable financial product belonged only to people who were already well served by banks.

The proposal sparked debate within the BHD financial group. It challenged an established convention about who a black card was for. I advocated for the idea because I believed that aspiration had a place in financial inclusion, alongside simplicity and access.

The response helped validate that belief. The card drew interest and encouraged people to learn about and apply for the product. Instead of defining the experience around what customers had never had, we gave them something they could feel proud to own.

What stayed with me

The product reached 100,000 active users in its first year. The black card was one part of that story, alongside the research, onboarding, and connected experiences our team built.

For me, the lasting lesson was that accessibility and desirability belong together. Making something easy to use matters, but so does how people feel when they choose it.

Leading this work taught me to look beyond the conventions of the industry and pay closer attention to the people we hoped to serve.

We wanted to make financial access useful in their daily lives. We also wanted it to feel like something that belonged to them.