Lendmate App
A mobile app empowering simple and stress-free borrowing and lending with personal circle.
Challenge
Informal lending and borrowing among friends often results in forgotten dues, awkward reminders, and unclear tracking. The mobile app streamlines these exchanges by removing friction, social discomfort, and ambiguity.
Project Story
I have often seen friends worry about small borrowing or lending, not because of the amount but because repayment affects trust. This made me think about how design could make the process easier and more comfortable.
Lendmate came from that idea, a simple way to track informal loans, send gentle reminders, and protect relationships.
Problem
How might we help people manage informal borrowing & lending without friction in relationships?
How I designed
Researched user pain points (19 participants).
I gathered insights from 19 participants through a survey to uncover real pain points faced by both lenders and borrowers.
Synthesized insights, created flows for both borrowers and lenders.
I combined the findings into key insights and prioritized those that are repeated or show clear themes and patterns.
This helped me think clearly and bring my ideas to life.
Iterated designs based on feedback from usability tests.
During usability testing, users were initially struggling because the flow didn’t match their expectations.
They naturally approached it like a messaging interaction. I restructured the experience around that mental model. Additionally, I introduced a payments segment that activates only when a request within the conversation turns into an actual financial transaction.
Focusing on core problem
Difficulty to keep track of dues and repayments
This is solved with a dedicated ledger that shows monthly balances, what I owe and what I’m owed.
It highlights upcoming dues with clear visual cues, and users can act directly from the ledger to review and pay, helping them stay on track.
Awkwardness in borrowing and lending activities
The problem of direct asks over calls or fragmented communication, is reduced by structuring it as chat-based requests.
Each request appears as a clear, card-based message and is automatically documented within the conversation, creating a transparent, trackable record that makes follow-ups feel less personal and more system-driven.
Complex borrowing and payments
The flow is simplified into a quick, guided action. Users can start a request from the home screen in a few steps. Clear distinction between ‘Borrow’ and ‘Lend’ to avoid confusion.
Only essential inputs - amount and due date to minimize cognitive load.
Impact*
35-45% monthly engagement- % of active users completing at least one borrow/lend transaction per month.
7-14 days average repayment completion- average duration between borrow request and repayment completion.
60-70% reminder to repayment conversion within 24-48 hours- % of users who repay within 1–2 days after a reminder.
*This is an anticipated impact as the final product has yet to be released.
Key learnings
Lending/borrowing among friends is less about money, more about emotion.
Always sketch first to clarify ideas and finalize flows before moving to hi-fidelity design.
How to improve emotional design with visual cues. Emotional design matters!
Early surveys and guerrilla testing shaped the design and helped avoid future blocks.
Reflection & future directions
In the future, integrating this feature into popular platform like Gpay or PhonePe could increase adoption and trust. Exploring edge cases, missed repayment and system transaction errors, will make the solution even more robust and liable.
