Designing Fave's onboarding was weirdly hard because the mandate was not just "get users set up." It had to feel inviting.
Which is a strange requirement for a UPI app, because a UPI app has a terrible first-date problem. It needs your phone number. It needs your bank account. It would very much like your contacts. It wants permission to buzz your phone. And if the product is about shared money, it also needs you to drag your family into the room.
That is a lot to ask from someone who has just met you.
Most payment apps deal with this by pretending the asks are normal. Fave needed the same things. There is no version of a UPI app that skips UPI setup. The question was how to make those asks feel less like a checklist and more like they belonged in the moment.
This is a breakdown of a few decisions that got there.
TLDR: I gave the app better manners ;)
One disclaimer before the breakdown: the app is not out yet, so none of this has met a real user. Everything here is a bet, not a result.
start with the people
The first real question Fave asks is: who do you live with?
Mom. Dad. Wife. Husband. Kid. Brother. Sister. Flatmate. Or just you.
I liked starting here because most household money already has people inside it. Rent is not just rent, it is the thing you remind your flatmate about without sounding annoying. Groceries are a shared fridge, a shared dinner, and sometimes a small argument about who keeps buying fancy chips. Payment apps usually flatten all of this into a transaction list. Fave starts by giving it a home.
The home shows up as a polaroid: a couch, a plant, your name on the white strip in handwriting. It took a few tries to land on that object. The first version was a house illustration, which looked like a bank's idea of a family. Then a container that photos dropped into, which slowly turned into a polaroid, because that is what a container of your people is. At some point, the polaroid was stuck on a fridge magnet, but I had to drop that idea for the sake of keeping it cleaner.
As people get added, their avatars show up inside the frame. The empty home starts to feel occupied. And that tiny bit of making matters. People care more about things they have had a hand in making. Anyone who has built one slightly wobbly IKEA table knows this.
So before the app asks for anything serious, the user has made something. The hope is it already feels a little bit theirs.
referrals feel cheap, invitations do not
Most finance-app invite flows have a certain smell. Invite friends. Earn rewards. Share this code. Help us grow, but let us pretend this is mostly about friendship. Everyone knows what is happening. The app wants distribution. The user wants free money.
With Fave, the invite had a better reason to exist. Once you make a home, adding people to it feels obvious. Of course your mom should be there. Of course your flatmate should be there if rent, groceries, cook payments, and Netflix are going to live in this thing.
It is closer to making a WhatsApp group for a trip than sending someone a referral link. Nobody thinks "wow, what a strong acquisition loop" when their cousin adds them to a wedding group. They just think, yes, unfortunately, I do need to be here.
The user adds people to their home, and the invites happen as a side effect. Then the polaroid goes into an envelope, sealed with a stamp, signed with the user's name: with love, from Gokul.
This tiny detail makes it stop looking like an app sending a growth link and start feeling like a person sending a small note. My wife would ignore mail from a company called Fave. She would not ignore an envelope with my name on it.
make the first payment mean something
At some point, the serious money setup has to happen. Bank account. UPI. First payment. The usual little obstacle course, and there is nothing I can do to make it fun. Or can I? 🤔
Which got me thinking … the user just added their loved ones to their home, so why not welcome them with ₹5?
₹5 is a funny amount. Too small to feel like finance, real enough to be money. The user is technically setting up UPI, and the button is honest about it (set up UPI in 2 mins), but the moment is framed as a tiny welcome gift. The bet is that people will do a surprising amount of boring setup to surprise their mom.
Small gifts already do this job in real life. You do not show up to a housewarming with a spreadsheet. You bring wine, or flowers, or one of those steel dabbas with sweets. The amount is not the point. The gesture is.
And because the ₹5 goes to someone close, nothing is expected back. A gift to your mom is not a settlement. That is the feeling the bank setup hides behind.
the return gift should feel noticed, not earned
After the user sends ₹5, Fave gives ₹11 back.
This could have easily become cashback. "Congrats, you earned ₹11." India has seen a decade of payment rewards, and every cashback mechanic eventually starts to smell like a campaign.
I wanted this to feel like a return gift, and the app just says so, in a little conversation before it hands you the money.
And it is ₹11, not ₹10, on purpose. Gift money here never ends in zero. ₹11, ₹51, ₹101, the amounts inside every wedding envelope you have ever opened, with that one extra rupee that turns a payment into a blessing. Ten rupees back would have been a promo. Eleven is manners.
It is still an incentive, obviously. No need to pretend the product has transcended growth mechanics and now operates purely on vibes. But the framing responds to the gesture, not just the tap, and that changes how it lands.
ask when the reason is fresh
The notification permission comes after the ₹11 arrives.
Most apps ask for notifications early, when the user has no reason to care. Fave waits until money has come in. Then the question is simple: do you want to know when this happens again?
This is not something new. Uber asking for location when you are booking a ride makes sense. A photo app asking for camera access when you tap the camera makes sense. Here, money just arrived, so notifications finally have a job.
one last note
Somewhere else, Mom's phone buzzes. She gets an envelope with your name on it, the polaroid with her in it, and ₹5 taped to the back. Nothing to redeem, nothing to do. Her first experience of the app is you being nice to her.
And before the home screen, there is one final note from Fave, on paper, in one more envelope.
A little sentimental, yes. But the onboarding starts with a home, so it should not end like a bank form.
Then the regular app appears. UPI ID, pay anyone, check balance, the payment calendar. The onboarding still collected everything it needed: number, OTP, contacts, invites, bank setup, first transaction, notifications. Each ask just had a little context before it arrived.
That is the thing I kept coming back to. In money apps, friction is not always the enemy. People will do the extra step when they understand why the product needs it. The problem is when the app asks like a stranger with a clipboard.
Fave could not avoid the asks. The work was to make each one feel less like a demand, and more like the next natural thing to do.