Deliverable
Santander Mexico wanted to modernize how corporate payroll accounts are opened. The traditional process required employees to visit a branch, fill out paper forms, and wait days for account activation — a major friction point for HR teams managing hundreds of employees at once.
The solution was Nómina Digital (Digital Payroll): a two-sided product where HR managers at Santander's corporate clients upload employee lists in bulk, and each employee receives a personal invitation to self-register a fully digital N2 bank account via their smartphone — identity verified through an INE document scan and selfie, with a digital card issued instantly.
The project required navigating CNBV (Mexico's financial regulator) N2 account requirements, aligning with Santander's existing brand and design language, and designing two fundamentally different surfaces for two fundamentally different users — all while leading a 6-person design team through a structured Accenture FORM methodology.
Nómina Digital operates as a coordinated two-sided product: the employer initiates, Santander orchestrates, and the employee activates. Each surface was designed independently, with the same service logic underneath.
Before any screen was drawn, we needed to understand two distinct user types — HR directors managing payroll for hundreds of employees, and workers who may never have used mobile banking before. We also had to map the full service: what Santander controls, what the employer manages, and what the employee experiences.
We conducted structured interviews with Santander's product team and HR directors at corporate clients to understand pain points in the current branch-based process. In parallel, we ran user research with employees — many first-time mobile banking users — to understand digital literacy, trust barriers, and onboarding expectations.
N2 simplified accounts are permitted by Mexico's CNBV without a branch visit — but require remote identity verification: INE scan + selfie. The entire employee flow was designed around this regulatory backbone, ensuring compliance without creating friction for users unfamiliar with the process.
With the blueprint and strategy approved, the team moved into high-fidelity design for both surfaces in parallel. The employer web app required a dashboard-oriented approach — data-dense but actionable. The employee mobile app demanded a highly guided, reassuring flow for users who may have never scanned a document on their phone before.
Designed for HR directors: a clean web interface to upload employee rosters (CSV/Excel), review and correct validation errors, trigger invitation dispatch, and monitor onboarding progress. The dashboard surfaces activation rate by employee with clear status indicators and resend controls.
The employee flow was designed around trust and simplicity — an audience that included many first-time mobile banking users. Each step was framed clearly: what they're doing, why Santander needs it, and what happens next. The INE scan and selfie steps received particular attention to reduce anxiety and failed attempts.
Both surfaces were designed in strict alignment with Santander Mexico's visual identity: brand red (#EC0000), typography, icon set, and spacing system. A component library was built to ensure consistency across the web app and mobile app, and to accelerate developer handoff. Santander's existing design language was respected while creating new patterns for flows that had no prior digital precedent — particularly the document scanning and selfie steps.
With designs validated and approved, the final phase focused on ensuring a clean transition to development and supporting the national rollout to Santander's corporate payroll client base. Design ops work — style guide documentation and component specifications — made the handoff sustainable beyond the engagement.
Worked alongside the Santander development team to annotate specs, clarify component behavior, and resolve edge cases as they emerged during build. Maintained a living spec document throughout the development sprint cycles to reduce back-and-forth and prevent design debt accumulation.
Nómina Digital was deployed nationally to Santander Mexico's corporate payroll clients. The platform enabled HR teams across the country to onboard employees onto N2 digital accounts without any branch visit — a first in Santander Mexico's digital product portfolio at the time.
A comprehensive style guide was produced to ensure the product could be maintained and extended by Santander's internal teams after the engagement concluded. The documentation covered component usage rules, interaction states, copy guidelines, and accessibility notes — structured so that designers unfamiliar with the project could onboard quickly.