A calmer bank for two million freelancers
We rebuilt Tandem's mobile banking app around the way freelancers actually get paid, turning tax season from a panic into a tap.
- Client
- Tandem
- Industry
- Fintech
- Year
- 2026
- Duration
- 20 weeks
01Overview
Tandem gives freelancers a business account, invoicing and tax savings in one app. Growth had outpaced the product: features were bolted on, navigation sprawled across five tabs, and support tickets climbed every quarter. We partnered with Tandem's product team to redesign the app from the ground up.
Results
+41%
more invoices sent in a customer's first week
−33%
support tickets per active customer
4.8
App Store rating, up from 3.9
02The challenge
Freelancers live with irregular income, and the old app made it feel worse. Balances ignored the money set aside for tax, invoices lived three screens away from payments, and new customers took nine days on average to send their first invoice. Tandem needed a product that felt as calm as a regular paycheck without hiding the complexity underneath.
03Our approach
Research with the people who use it
We ran 42 interviews and two diary studies with freelancers in design, trades and consulting, mapping every moment money moved in and out of their business.
One home, three numbers
The new home screen answers the only questions that matter: what you have, what you owe the tax office, and what is truly yours to spend. Everything else is one tap away.
A design system built to ship
We built the component library in Figma and in code alongside Tandem's engineers, so the new app shipped in quarterly releases instead of one risky launch.
- A single flow for invoicing and getting paid
- Automatic tax pots with live estimates
- Accessible components that meet WCAG 2.2 AA
04The outcome
The redesigned app reached every customer in March 2026. Support volume per customer fell by a third within a quarter, and Tandem now onboards more new businesses each month than it did in its entire first year.
Northform didn't just redesign our app. They changed how our whole team thinks about the people we build for.
Project team
Ana FerreiraFounder & Creative Director
Lena HoffmannDesign Director
Daniel TanHead of Engineering
Sofia MarínStrategy Lead