How to build a powerful fintech brand in 6 steps?

Your brand is the very first thing potential customers will experience, and you know what they say about first impressions... you only get one.

If you are reading this, you already know that building a brand is an important element behind every successful fintech solution.

Another thing you may know is that brand design can be a messy and complex process. It involves hard discussions, lots of research, tough decisions, strategic thinking, and creativity.

We challenged ourselves to simplify the seemingly complex process and outlined a 6 step guide to build a strong fintech brand.

A well-thought-out fintech brand builds credibility with your audience. It shows your vision, gives a competitive edge in the crowded marketplace.
Using the right visual connections the brand instantly creates trust, portrays the core message, values, and purpose.

A strategically built fintech brand has a signature visual style consisting of identifying elements such as logo, brand graphics, iconography, signature color palette, and typography. The brand needs to have a defined tone of voice that is cohesively used in website copy, social media, and throughout the product.

The process can look long and scary, but If you do the brand building process right, you'll reap the benefits once your new brand is launched. We've been building tech brands since 2010 so we know what to focus on and what mistakes to avoid to make it easier for you and your team.

Most fintech teams are great at building products that challenge financial markets, yet making a product successful is a rather tough goal.
If your brand is in its early stages of preparing to rebrand, follow these tips to move through the process and build a strong brand that sets you up for success.

Brand market research helps achieve competitive advantage through objective, data-based decisions. It is important to establish a product-market fit early on. Let's take a look at how you would go about this.

Start your market research with an overview of the industry. For example, if you're launching a paytech solution for a Gen-Z audience – check out industry publications, personal finance blogs like MoneyCrashers, and competitor applications. Get a general feel for the market landscape and existing solutions.

The next stage is to carry out deeper research. Channels such as focus groups, interviews, and online surveys allow you to get a glimpse into the minds of your potential customers and determine whether they would be interested to use your product.

Once you've conducted market research, you should have enough data to guide your next move - building target customer profiles (and then building a brand) with confidence.

New fintech products often tell the customer: 'Here is a product for you.' That's because financial institutions begin by partnering with vendors before they've understood what customers actually want and need.

How to prevent that? Build detailed customer profiles (aka buyer personas) of your ideal customers and only then create solutions based on their needs.

A buyer persona is like a character profile of your ideal customers: who they are, what they want, and what their lives are like. It also helps you to understand their motivations for engaging with your brand, and expectedly for buying your product.

Firstly, identify who your customers might be. For example, if you are building a stock trading solution for Millennials And Gen-Zers, your target customers can be segmented by demographic, psychographic, and behavior variables.

Having these 3 segments in mind, build your customer profile. Draw 2 by 2 table which include 4 columns:

The strategy is the building block of the company's brand foundations. Your brand strategy is a detailed plan that outlines your company's vision, what, vision, personality, and what are you trying to achieve in the world.

The strategy should consist of:

1. Brand Purpose

The brand purpose answers the question of why does your company exist. The statement purpose connects with consumers on a more emotional level.

Start by asking - what is the company's reason for being beyond making capital?

A few examples of brand purpose statements:

"To build the web's most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solution." - PayPal

"To accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy". – Tesla

"To democratize finance for all." - Robinhood

2. Brand Vision

The brand vision answers the question of the ideas behind a brand that help guide the future. The brand vision supports the business strategy, differentiates from competitors, resonates with customers, energizes and inspires employees and partners.

Start by asking - what future the company wants to help create?

A few examples of brand vision statements:

"To transform the way you manage your money with the latest technology and the best minds from around the globe, in order to change banking for the better." - N26 bank

"To make it easier than ever to create and connect decentralized applications, services, and institutions. By empowering innovators to build better solutions, we seek to free society from its reliance on a broken web where its large institutions can't violate our trust." - Polkadot

3. Brand Mission

A brand mission statement answers the question of how it plans to serve its audience. It is action-oriented and gives an idea of what your business does and what impact it wants to make.

Start by asking 3 questions:

1. What do you provide?
2. What is going to make you stand out?
3. How are you going to help your customer?

A few examples of brand mission statements:

"We believe in an alternative to the banking of the past. We're focused on solving problems, rather than selling financial products. We want to make the world a better place and change people's lives through Monzo." - Monzo bank

4. Brand Values

Brand values are a selection of core decision-making principles that will guide a company during the toughest times. They will drive the company's culture, product development,

Decide on 3-4 values and define what do they mean exactly for your company.

Here is an example of Crypto.com value system:

Think Clearly

Be Resourceful

Stay Determined

Dream Big

Take Ownership and Be Decisive

Remain Humble


You can read more: https://crypto.com/about


5. Brand Audience

Brand audience answers the question about who do you serve? This is a condensed version of the customer profiles you have identified in the Step 2.

6. Brand Voice

The brand voice answers how does your brand sounds like. The master of the tone of voice in fintech sphere is Monzo. Here is a brief example from their tone of voice guidelines.


"We use the language our audience uses, and make the technical stuff as clear as we can.

We're ambitious, positive and always focused on what matters to people.

We're transparent about what we're doing and why, and we don't hide behind ambiguity.

We're open, inclusive and welcoming to everyone." - Monzo


7. Brand Personality

Brand personality defines all related human characteristics associated with a brand. They are expressed as adjectives that communicate how you aspire customers to perceive your brand. It can also refer to demographics like gender, age, and social class, etc.

There are several frameworks to narrow down core defining characteristics. Two of the most popular frameworks are Aaker's Brand Personality Dimension Framework and Brand Archetypes Framework.

In our process, we use a combination of Aakers philosophy and brand archetypes research to narrow down the defining personality. With this, we analyze and go deeper with our own simple, yet very effective brand personality slider methodology. We ask teams to put a virtual dot between pairs of brand extremes and explain what does that means for them.


8. Positioning statement

The positioning statement is a concise statement of all brand strategy which should be used as a guide to ensure the brand experience is consistent. A brand positioning statement explains what your brand does, identifies your target audience, and the benefits of your brand.

It should consist of:

• product/service
• customers
• culture
• tone of voice
• brand feel
• impact

The brand statement helps to communicate your brand, thus supporting your brand strategy. As such, before you are ready to dive into your brand identity, it's important to have a fully formed strategy.

The logo design is the first visual connection of the brand with the customer. It is the face of your company.

A logo design makes the first impression on your behalf and the customer will likely remember it every time he thinks, talks, or writes about the brand and experience associated with it. And a good logo tells a thousand words.

Katherine Dillon - NYU Associate Arts Professor when giving a lecture asks to draw 3 memorable logos. The top 3 end up being - Apple, Nike, and McDonald's.

That begs the question, what makes them memorable and distinctive?

Over the 10+ years working with technology companies, startups and fintech I have identified what a good logo needs to be:

• Distinctive;
• Memorable;
• Practical at all scales;
• Appropriate for the fintech industry;
• Smart - your secret sauce to creating an instant connection.

Evaluate your logo based on these points and let me know if you can pass all of them?

Approaches in designing a logo

The logo design can be:

• Typographic
• Iconographic / Pictographic
• Emblem
• and a combination of iconography and typography.

The latter approach is the most suitable for the digital-only fintech industry. Typically, the brand launches online and it has the challenge to create meaningful connections with customers fast. Your logo needs to tell a story in an instant.

By choosing a combination approach you can hit two birds with one stone. The right iconography creates a smart visual connection that hints at what the company does, while typography ties a name to the visual connection.

The one thing I want to leave you when designing a logo design is - you really want to tell one story of your company, not 3. Don't try to fit everything into one symbol.

A brand identity is a beautiful design system that brings your brand alive.

Brand identity starts by creating a brand base - all needed elements that will later construct your brand.

Here is what you need to create a brand system - a basis for a wholesome brand:

1. logo
2. brand elements and graphics
3. typography
4. color palettes
5. composition
6. iconography
7. photography
8. illustration

Once you have the brand system set up, you are ready to create all needed brand identity assets. An example of fintech identity asset list that creates a good, overall impression:

• Business cards
• Document layouts - letterhead, invoice
• Social media style for key social channels
• Presentation deck or pitch deck
• Report template
• Billboards
• Motion, animation

Each identity element influences the other and makes a complete brand piece by piece.

Remember, visual elements of the brand are highly important in creating fintech company's credibility and trust. Great visuals differentiate the brand from the competitors and give a needed competitive edge.

The hard work is done. Your brand is complete, the last step in creating a fintech brand is to outline all created brand assets into a style guide.

Style guide makes sure you will use your brand assets properly and this is where style guide comes into place.

A style guide is a document providing instructions about correct and wrong ways to use created brand assets. Traditionally, a style guide includes an explanation of the concept and idea behind a logo and identity as well as instructions on how to use the brand system for different purposes, including shaping future identity items for when you need them.

Brand development is a long-term plan for developing a successful brand presence to achieve company goals.

Branding a fin-tech company or a product presents a unique set of challenges. There's an essential coldness to technology and finance that can only be overcome by a powerful, human-centric brand. Go through the steps while developing your brand and your brand will have a purpose and meaning.

And if you're feeling overwhelmed or don't have the time or resources to take on the brand development yourself, consider bringing in the expert team. We're happy to help you get your fintech brand ready to conquer the market.