Mesh is a one-stop hub that provides a company full control, visibility and in-depth intelligence over the entire corporate spending. Mesh offers a one simple-spend management platform with dedicated virtual cards to manage subscriptions, block overspend, automatic receipt matching, and advanced savings insights.
When I joined Mesh the company was focusing on a cross-border business-payments solution, yet struggled to acquire partners and users. As the Covid-19 crisis was rolling it was clear that a pivot was necessary. The aim was to design a platform, based on the existing technology, that creates and distributes customizable virtual cards. We also wanted to provide additional values such as: insights to optimize spending, control spend limits, vendor locks, approval flows, viewing permissions and real-time visibility on all subscriptions.
The platform should serve several companies, each with its own department structure, staff hierarchy and needs. The challenge was to find a unified and flexible solution that will cater to all types of enterprises while focusing on the needs of the finance team. Additionally, there was a need to design a dedicated back office platform to insure an effective system that supports the client facing operation.
While working on the product I also designed the company’s website, social media ads and the presentations for potential investors.
The research phase which was done together with the companies we already served, clarified the needs and opportunities that were necessary to include in order to “disrupt” the corporate payments space. These are some of the main insights:
A physical card needs to be canceled if fraud is detected, or if a card goes missing or is stolen. It may take up to 14 business days to receive a new physical card. This situation disrupts work continuity as managers have to track down and update card details for every employee, vendor, and service linked to that account.
It is common practice for many businesses that the expense authorization process involves long email chains and verbal approvals. It requires manually entering the expense information into long and complex excel sheets and chasing people to provide invoices and receipts. This leaves room for human errors and may subject the company to internal and external frauds.
Expenses in the companies we worked with were made in two major categories:On-Demand Expenses - one time use for all kinds of miscellaneous expenses.Subscriptions - ongoing expenses for all the services a company is using.
Once we defined the users and their needs we were able to specify the needs we want to attend. The goal was to categorize and prioritize content in order to come up with well thought out flows. This diagram served as a high-level visual representation of the product’s infrastructure, features, and hierarchy.
We used wireframes to help us determine the basic structure and navigation patterns of the platform. It was used to show hierarchy of information and identify key functions, while considering how this layout serves the purpose of each page and the overall goals of the users.
Aktiv Grotesk is a flexible and diverse font family. The typeface is neutral, contemporary, and serious. It is an ideal choice for the needs of Mesh that require a diverse use of type in headings and copy. This versatile font can be successfully applied to a broad range of contexts and media.
The primary brand colors are white and black and shades of gray. Mesh blue is an important color that is unique to Mesh and should be used often for moments of interaction between a user and the brand.
