KakaoBank: Delivering design 30% faster with Figma

Time to read: 5 minutes

Summary: KakaoBank, a pioneer in South Korea’s internet banking industry, is redefining financial experiences through a design-centric strategy. By making financial services easier and more accessible in customers’ daily lives, the KakaoBank design team plays a pivotal role in driving this transformation.

With Figma, the team rapidly brings ideas to life, from design to prototyping. The adoption of Figma’s design system has increased design process efficiency by 30%, while Figma Enterprise has enhanced security and streamlined workflows through dedicated workspaces. These improvements have not only strengthened collaboration but also significantly accelerated product launch timelines.

Established in 2017, KakaoBank is South Korea's leading digital-only bank, offering a full range of financial services exclusively through mobile platforms. Beyond banking, KakaoBank aims to become a lifestyle platform that integrates seamlessly into users' daily lives. By continuously innovating financial experiences, the company ensures that its services are simpler and more accessible, allowing users to engage with financial solutions more frequently and effortlessly.

Design-Centric Growth Strategy: The Key to Success

Since its launch, KakaoBank has drawn significant attention for its innovative user experience (UX), leveraging the popular Kakao Friends characters that represent the Kakao brand. By redefining the conventional image of banking, KakaoBank has paved the way for a new era in financial services. At the core of this transformation lies a design-driven growth strategy and the exceptional contributions of its design team. KakaoBank’s design team plays a pivotal role in breaking away from the rigid and formal perception often associated with the financial industry. Instead, they focus on creating a friendly and approachable experience for users. By doing so, they have successfully redefined how customers perceive and interact with banking services.

KakaoBank’s design team is composed of product designers, brand designers, graphic designers, and communication designers. Together, they manage all design-related tasks across the organization, from UI/UX design to branding and marketing efforts. This holistic approach ensures that every touchpoint aligns seamlessly with KakaoBank’s identity and user-focused philosophy. Figma has become an indispensable partner for KakaoBank’s design team, enabling them to turn their ideas into reality. By facilitating efficient communication and collaboration across teams, Figma has proven to be the perfect tool for solving complex design challenges.

Rapid Validation from Design to Prototyping with Figma

KakaoBank’s design team has revolutionized the complex world of financial experiences with Figma. During product development, the design team invests significant effort in creating impactful service concepts and seamless user flows to simplify complex financial concepts. A prime example of this is the “One-Month Savings Plan,” a product launched in 2023 that surpassed one million users in record time.

To bring this idea to life, the team designed a fun and engaging elevator concept, where users save money daily for a month, progressing one floor at a time from the 1st to the 31st floor. Using Figma, the design team visualized this idea in a way anyone could easily understand. Reflecting on the process, Design Team Lead Seung-Hwan Lee shared, “Figma was the perfect tool to visualize all 31 floors. Its infinite canvas allowed us to explore all our ideas on a single screen.”

Figma also made sharing designs effortless. “In the past, handing designs over to the development team required additional tools and processes, which was cumbersome. Now, with just a single link, anyone with the proper permissions can view the final design without needing to install Figma,” Lee explained. Figma’s ability to let multiple collaborators provide real-time feedback in a single file has revolutionized communication within KakaoBank’s design team, speeding up the design process and ensuring everyone stays aligned toward a common goal.

The prototyping features in Figma proved equally invaluable. Prototyping plays a key role in designing service flows and refining final details. KakaoBank uses prototypes for nearly every new product, including the Save Race charity marathon held in 2024. From developing key visuals and promotional materials to creating artwork for the event, Figma’s prototyping tool allowed designers, developers, and marketers to share ideas seamlessly. This improved team collaboration and increased the persuasiveness of the designs.

Boosting Design Efficiency by 30% with Figma’s Design System

In the finance industry, where constraints and security are critical, KakaoBank must carefully evaluate multiple factors during product development. Maintaining an efficient design process and responding swiftly to issues are essential. However, the team identified inefficiencies, such as inconsistent app designs, during collaborative workflows.

To overcome these limitations, the team adopted Figma’s design system. The initial goal was to improve efficiency by standardizing UI/UX and ensuring product consistency. Over time, the focus expanded to include creating design and system guides that effectively address challenges faced by product creators. The positive impact of this shift is evident in team feedback.

Design Team Lead Seung-Hwan Lee noted, “Now, colleagues from other departments often request to use the design system themselves. By combining design elements to quickly create new designs, employee productivity has significantly increased, and our efficiency has improved by 30%. Thanks to Figma’s design system, their customers can now enjoy convenient and exceptional services faster than ever.”

Lee also highlighted another advantage: “When new team members join, the design system helps them quickly understand their responsibilities, speeding up the onboarding process.”

Today, KakaoBank’s design team uses the design system not just as a tool for providing guidelines and components but as a platform for empowering product creators to think creatively and solve problems swiftly. Lee emphasized, “The design system has reduced the time spent exchanging ideas with other teams, allowing us to dedicate more time to developing better services. Our collaboration has truly transformed thanks to Figma’s design system.”

Enterprise Plan: Enhanced Security and Dedicated Workspaces for Improved Efficiency

KakaoBank’s decision to use Figma wasn’t solely about design. As a financial institution, security is paramount, and KakaoBank places a strong emphasis on protecting sensitive information. To meet these needs, the company adopted Figma’s Enterprise plan, which provides enhanced security features such as data encryption, two-factor authentication, and an on-demand cloud environment to ensure safe data management.

“Figma is a tool built for sharing and collaboration, but it also meets our stringent security standards,” said Seung-Hwan Lee, KakaoBank’s Design Team Lead. “For example, features like restricting access for external users and integrating activity logs with KakaoBank’s internal monitoring tools via API helped us meet our rigorous security requirements.”

The benefits of the Enterprise plan go beyond security. Given the diverse roles within the design team, managing files effectively was critical. With Figma’s dedicated workspace feature, the team can now organize files systematically by discipline, such as design systems, UI, graphics, branding, promotions, and personal test spaces. This structure has significantly improved operational efficiency. Moreover, the ability to templatize product and promotional work has enabled faster responses during collaborative projects.

Recently, KakaoBank’s design team also leveraged Figma to redefine its brand identity guidelines and share them company-wide. They also produced various outputs aligned with the bank’s design strategy, playing a key role in shaping users’ perceptions of the KakaoBank brand.

So, what does Figma mean to the design team driving KakaoBank’s innovation? Lee explained, “Figma is the first tool we open in the morning. Our team has immense satisfaction with the platform. It’s also an excellent product development tool for real-time collaboration with colleagues from other departments, like planners and developers.”

He added, “Figma is the most reliable partner, enabling KakaoBank’s energetic and creative team to bring their ideas to life without wasting time.” His response underscores the team’s strong trust in Figma as a tool for innovation and efficiency.