Rise Mobile — Global Payroll, Anywhere

Challenge. Rise had built a robust platform for paying employees and contractors across the world, but the experience had historically been designed around desktop.

That created an opportunity I felt we were overlooking. Employees could be paid as frequently as daily, yet accessing, managing, and moving those funds was still primarily treated as a desktop experience. The moments that mattered most to an employee—seeing that they had been paid, confirming where their money was going, or withdrawing funds—could happen anywhere. I brought the mobile opportunity into focus and led the design of a net-new employee experience around a simple question:

The challenge wasn’t simply translating the desktop product onto a smaller screen. It was creating a complete mobile financial experience without sacrificing the functionality, trust, or compliance requirements of the platform.

What I Focused On. I established one principle early: mobile shouldn’t be a reduced version of Rise. Employees still needed access to the capabilities available on desktop, but the hierarchy needed to change around what mattered when using the product on the go. I focused heavily on the moments immediately surrounding getting paid:

That made withdrawals one of the most important workflows in the experience.

I designed the mobile product so an employee could quickly understand when funds arrived and move them to the destination that worked for them—whether that meant a bank account, wallet, exchange, or another supported withdrawal method.

Direct deposit introduced another important trust problem. Employees shouldn’t have to wonder what will happen when their next payment arrives. The experience needed to clearly communicate that direct deposit was active, where funds would be routed, and give employees confidence that their money was going to the correct destination.

The goal became complete functionality with a mobile-first hierarchy, rather than desktop functionality compressed into a mobile interface.

What I Learned. Designing a global financial product fundamentally changed how I thought about simplicity. An action that appears incredibly simple to an employee—“withdraw my money”—can trigger an entirely different set of requirements depending on their country, region, state, payment method, currency, and financial rail.

Different jurisdictions introduce different requirements around identity, KYC, banking, crypto, withdrawal availability, and financial compliance. That became one of the biggest lessons from the project:

The complexity of the system shouldn’t become the complexity of the experience.Instead of exposing every underlying rule to employees, I learned to design experiences that progressively respond to the employee’s location, eligibility, account configuration, and chosen financial rail. The interface could remain straightforward even when the infrastructure behind it wasn’t.

Solution. I designed the Rise employee mobile experience from the ground up, covering the complete employee journey rather than creating a limited companion application. The experience gives employees a clear view of their money, incoming payments, transaction activity, withdrawal destinations, direct deposit configuration, and the financial tools available to them. Getting paid became the center of the experience.

Employees can immediately understand when funds have arrived and what is available to them. From there, they can move money through supported bank, wallet, exchange, or other withdrawal methods without needing to return to desktop. For employees using direct deposit, the experience makes the destination of future payments explicit, creating confidence that funds will automatically move where expected.

Behind those simple interactions is a rules-driven experience capable of adapting to different geographic, regulatory, currency, identity, and payment requirements.

The result is an experience that feels intentionally mobile without compromising the capabilities of the larger Rise platform.

Result. The project established mobile as a meaningful part of the Rise employee experience rather than a secondary extension of desktop.

Employees could now manage the complete lifecycle of getting paid from their phone—from seeing that funds had arrived to understanding where those funds were going and withdrawing them through the financial rail that worked for them.

38% of employee sessions shifted to mobile following launch.

47% of mobile withdrawals were initiated within 24 hours of employees receiving funds, reinforcing the importance of immediate access to earnings.

The mobile-first withdrawal experience reduced median time-to-withdrawal by 34% compared with the equivalent desktop journey.

Support inquiries related to payment destination and withdrawal status decreased 21% after introducing clearer payment and direct-deposit visibility.

More importantly, the work expanded the role mobile could play within the Rise ecosystem. Mobile wasn’t treated as a simplified view of payroll—it became a complete financial experience designed around the moment employees care about most: