Product Designerwith systems thinkingat global scale

I design complex products end to end, connecting user needs, business logic and local market realities into products that scale

inDrive · Fintech & Marketplace · B2C & B2B · 2025

+11% rides per
user in Brazil

Driving cashless growth through Pix, Brazil's most popular payment method.

Read case App store

Local payment methods in the passenger app

inDrive · Fintech & Marketplace · B2C & B2B · 2024-2026

Cashless payments from 0→1 across emerging markets

Building the full payment journey, from setup to cash-out, for a marketplace across 48 countries where cash dominates.

App store

Card payments, cashback and Pix onboarding

Serra · AI health assistant · Concept · 2026

AI that turns health data into action

One health score, personalised AI insights and Generative UI that adapts to each goal.

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Serra movement, stress and sleep goal settings

Raiffeisen Bank · B2B · 2022

Scaling the B2B app beyond 200K users

A new architecture to move web users to mobile and support future growth.

Read case App store

Raiffeisen Bank · B2B · 2022

10x faster business transfers

Replacing a three day wait with instant 24/7 transfers.

Read case App store

About me

My background in environmental design taught me to see every detail as part of a larger system. I bring that perspective to digital products, shaping how they work and how they can grow.

For over 8 years, I've designed fintech products across banking, mobility and marketplaces, from 0→1 launches to multi-market rollouts. I'm comfortable starting with an open-ended problem, defining the product logic and working with teams through launch and growth.

Let's build something designed to scale

alena.rykunina@gmail.com Telegram LinkedIn

3x more first rides
paid cashless

Designing payment and wallet experiences around local methods, rules, and user behavior.

Cashless adoption meant designing for markets where cash was already the familiar way to pay. I designed and scaled payment and wallet flows for passengers and drivers across 48 countries.

Role: Senior Product Designer
Scope: Sole designer of the payments domain for 3.5 years, covering passenger and driver payment and wallet flows.
Team: I worked with 5 product teams and 20+ engineers across the payments domain.
Impact: Payment and wallet flows across 48 countries, with 82% driver adoption in launched South African cities.

Context

inDrive is the #2 ride-hailing app, with 300M+ downloads, but scale alone does not explain local payment behavior. Cashless adoption was the goal, so the work had to account for local methods, rules, and user behavior. I worked across both sides of the marketplace, designing how passengers paid and how drivers used payment and wallet flows.

Challenges

Passengers' view

[FILL: one first-person statement from passenger research about choosing cashless over cash.]

Drivers' view

[FILL: one first-person statement from driver research about accepting cashless payments.]

Company's view

We needed to grow cashless adoption across markets while accounting for local payment methods, rules, and user behavior.

South Africa

Designing for a cash-first market

I designed cashless payment flows for South Africa, where cash-first behavior was central to the problem.

[FILL: the specific local payment methods, rules, and passenger or driver behaviors that shaped the work.]

[IMAGE: South Africa market overview showing the local payment methods and the research findings that affected the flow.]

Research before design

[FILL: whom I researched, how I researched them, and the findings that changed my initial assumptions.]

[IMAGE: Annotated research findings, with each passenger or driver observation linked to the design question it raised.]

Decisions in the flow

[FILL: 2-3 shipped design decisions, each connecting a research finding to a specific change in the cashless flow.]

[IMAGE: The shipped South Africa cashless flow, with callouts beside each screen explaining the research finding behind the decision.]

Driver adoption

Driver adoption reached 82% in the launched cities in South Africa, providing a concrete result for this local-market work.

[FILL: how driver adoption was defined and when it was measured.]

[IMAGE: An 82% driver adoption chart, labelled with the launched-city cohort and measurement period.]

Passenger promo experiment

Hypothesis

[FILL: the original hypothesis explaining why the promotion would increase cashless choice on the first ride.]

[IMAGE: The promotion hypothesis alongside the exact moment in the passenger flow where it was tested.]

What I tested

I tested a passenger promotion aimed at increasing cashless choice on the first ride.

[FILL: the promotion, eligibility rules, control experience, and tested variation.]

[IMAGE: Control and test screens side by side, with the promotion and eligibility conditions annotated.]

Results and rollout

First-ride cashless choice grew from 14% to 45% in one country and from 3% to 39% in another. The experiment scaled globally and helped the fintech cluster reach its annual goal for the year.

[IMAGE: Separate before-and-after charts for each country, showing 14% to 45% and 3% to 39%, followed by the global rollout scope.]

Scaling it

A research approach others reused

I led local-market payment research that became a validation approach reused by product leads. This extended the value of the research beyond the payment flows I designed myself.

[FILL: the steps in the validation approach and one example of how a product lead reused it.]

[IMAGE: The reusable validation template, paired with a completed example showing how findings informed a market decision.]

Unifying top-up flows

I led the unification of 2 top-up flows, which enabled global payment integration and monetization in new countries within 2 sprints. This work addressed the shared payment foundation alongside the local-market experiences I designed for passengers and drivers.

[FILL: what differed between the original flows and what the unified flow made reusable.]

[IMAGE: The original top-up flows beside the unified flow, highlighting shared steps and the integration points used in new countries.]