Work/Payman AI

Case study ( 07 ) · Payman

Payman AI: rebranding an agentic banking site for institutional trust.

Payman had agents that move real money and a first screen that read as a friendly startup. Audited the site as a bank buyer, rebuilt the brand around control, and fixed the usability that got in the way.

Role: Brand and Web Designer, end to end
Timeline: 2026
Format: Portfolio redesign of paymanai.com, solo
Skills: Brand audit, positioning, visual identity, web design, front-end build

The Setup

A platform that moves real money, built for a buyer who trusts nothing yet.

Payman AI deploys agents for banks and credit unions that carry out real transactions: payments, transfers and account analysis, inside the institution's own systems.

The buyer is a skeptical, risk-averse bank decision maker. This is my portfolio redesign of paymanai.com. Facts, quotes and the logo come from the live site; the audit, positioning and visual system are mine.

The live paymanai.com hero: the headline We deploy AI agents that handle money on a cream background, a choice between Banks and Credit Unions, and a mountain illustration. — paymanai.com as I found it: a warm hero, a mountain illustration, and a choice between “Banks” and “Credit Unions”

The Tension

The page sold warmth to a buyer who needs proof.

For a bank, capability is the frightening part: an agent that can move money can move it wrongly. The live page answered with warmth: one friendly voice, a decorative mountain, and an announcement bar, a pop-up and a cookie banner in front of the headline.

The job wasn't awareness. It was belief: from “AI will take my customers' questions” to “I can deploy this, and I hold the kill switch.”

The old Payman first screen with three numbered callouts: the announcement bar, a header with no primary action, and a segment picker, each with a mock analytics figure. — Mock analytics: where the first screen loses a cautious buyer (illustrative, not measured)

Two columns: when the customer asks AI outside the bank, the customer leaves; inside the bank, the customer stays, with data, audit trail and a kill switch. — The redesigned “shift” section: where the question is asked decides who keeps the customer

55%
of U.S. consumers and small businesses already take their money questions to AI. TD Bank, 2026 AI Insights Report.
200M+
people ask ChatGPT about money every month, and it can't see a single one of your balances. OpenAI usage disclosures, 2026.

The Decision

Sell the control, not the magic.

Position Payman as the AI you can govern: show the controls, not the intelligence. No hype, no decorative first screen, no pop-ups.

“You set the rules. You see every action.” names what a bank is afraid of and answers it. I audited the live site as a first-time bank buyer and wrote the fix beside every finding.

Audit: what I found, what I did

What I foundWhat I did
One friendly voice for everythingTwo voices: a serif for the signed statement, a mono for the system record
Decorative mountain art on the first screenThe control process is the hero image: request, policy check, approval, audit log
Rules, audit trail and kill switch in the last thirdMoved up to the fourth section, on their own teal stage
Announcement bar, pop-up and cookie banner before the headlineNothing between the visitor and the headline; the pop-up is dropped
A segment choice instead of an actionOne primary action, “Meet your agent”, in the header and the hero
Pop-up clips the email field on phonesOne column on phones, form fields at least 44px tall, no overlays

The control process, shown in the hero

Request
Policy check
Approval required
Audit log

Requested, checked, approved, logged. The same four steps return in the explainer and in the audit log.

A two-by-two grid of wireframes comparing control steps below the fold or in the hero, with a segment picker or one primary action; the hero with one action is chosen and leads to the final hero. — Layout exploration: control steps in the hero, with one primary action

The redesigned control section on a deep teal stage: Your rules, Full audit trail and Kill switch, with stepped bars above a governed agent layer between cores and anything that moves money. — Rules, audit trail and kill switch, moved up to the fourth section on their own teal stage

The four-step section: a live chat in a bank app where Payman lists five vendor payments, asks for a phone code, and confirms five payments sent. — Four steps as a live chat: ask, check, approve, log

The System

A visual identity derived from the positioning, not from taste.

The look follows from the position: paper and ink for the document, deep teal for institutional trust, mauve for warmth, and yellow only as a signal. There is no red, so status reads as confirmation, not alarm.

Three voices, one job each: serif for the signed statement, sans for body, mono for the system record. Every line passes one test: could a compliance officer quote this?

Palette

Paper#F3F3F0 · Page
Ink#171717 · Text
Teal#0E3D42 · Trust
Mid teal#2F8A8C · Focus
Mauve#D4B3CA · Warmth
Signal yellow#F4FF45 · Signal only

Yellow is a bar, a digit or a strip. Never a fill.

Type: three voices, one job each

Display · Newsreader

We deploy AI agents that handle money.

Body · Geist

Agents that carry out real banking transactions for your customers, under policies, approvals and audit trails you control.

Record · Geist Mono

PM-2026-001 // VERSION 1.0 · REQUESTED → CHECKED → APPROVED → LOGGED

The page, in the order a buyer worries

Risk
Control
Process
Proof
Fit
Reassurance
Action

Each section answers one question a bank asks before it says yes.

Design system preview: typography, colour tokens and icons; buttons in active, hovered and disabled states; form inputs, checkboxes and radios; and components such as status tags, the kill switch and audit rows. — The design system behind the page: type, colour, buttons, forms and components

The security section: tabs for data and custody, identity and policy, and audit and control, with a teal panel of mono reference lines. — Security, laid out like a bank document: three tabs, one mono record

The audience section: Payman at the centre of a grid of banks, credit unions, customers, members, staff, core banking, digital banking and voice and text. — Who it serves, drawn as one grid with Payman at the centre

The Impact

The surfaces now match the claim.

Same facts, same viewport, before and after. The first screen now answers the buyer's risk question before it asks for anything.

This is a portfolio redesign: no production metrics, and no tests with real bank buyers. The chat, payments and approval code are illustrative.

The redesigned hero with the four-step control process.

The redesigned statistics section, with sources in mono.

Control in the first scroll
The four-step process is the hero image, not an illustration.
One action, everywhere
“Meet your agent” in the header and the hero, from the first pixel.
Nothing in the way
No pop-up, no banner between the visitor and the headline.

View the prototype

The Takeaway

In regulated software, show the control before the capability.

Show the control before the capability. The page works because it opts out of the AI category's vocabulary of magic and warmth and builds its own: paper, hairlines, serif authority, evidence on every screen.

The limits: a free stand-in serif, two text-wordmark logos, and no testing with real bank buyers. Next, I'd see whether compliance leads find the kill switch unprompted.

A platform that moves real money, built for a buyer who trusts nothing yet.

The page sold warmth to a buyer who needs proof.

55%

200M+

Sell the control, not the magic.

A visual identity derived from the positioning, not from taste.

The surfaces now match the claim.

Control in the first scroll

One action, everywhere

Nothing in the way

In regulated software, show the control before the capability.