Concept study · 20228 min read
N26 · Rules
Bringing money automation to Brazil without translating the European screen
- 40%
- of working Brazilians are not paid a monthly salary. The European feature assumes they are.
- 38
- screens drawn across two end-to-end flows.
- 3
- open questions written down for the team, instead of buried in the handover.
- 0
- lines shipped. N26 closed its Brazilian operation in November 2023.
Concept study. Never shipped. Done at Diletta Solutions, the software company where I work, for the client N26, in March 2022. Loops was the internal project name. In the interface the feature is called Rules. In Europe N26 ships this as Rules, inside the Automations family, on top of the bank's savings sub-accounts.
00 File
| Client | N26 Brazil |
| Product | Rules · money automation by trigger and action |
| Role | sole author of the study · Diletta Solutions, client N26 |
| Period | March 2022 |
| Platform | iOS and Android |
| Tools | Figma, FigJam |
| Scope | the whole concept: map, benchmark, grammar, vocabulary and two flows |
One line. The European version automates saving from a monthly salary. The study changed the question: instead of "what day does your salary land", it asked "what happens in your life". The trigger vocabulary became food delivery, your team scoring a goal, and instant payments.
01 Summary
Problem. N26 Europe automates money with Rules: move an amount into a savings sub-account on a date and frequency. The anchor is a monthly salary on a fixed date. The Brazilian operation had the same engine and an audience with a different income rhythm and a different repertoire of events.
What I did. A concept map in four questions, a benchmark of three categories, a rule grammar in a single sentence, a localized vocabulary of triggers and actions, named templates as an on-ramp, and two flows end to end.
Result. The proposal, two complete flows, and three open questions on the record. Never shipped: N26 closed its Brazilian operation in November 2023.
Role. Sole author of the study. No access to usage data and no research budget, which is stated because it changes what the study can claim.
02 Context
N26 opened in Brazil in November 2021, two years after announcing its arrival, starting with a group of insiders. In March 2022, when I ran the study, the Brazilian team was deciding which European features to import and in what order. The operation closed in November 2023 without passing 200,000 customers.
03 Constraint
The vocabulary lesson from this study comes back in CPF Seguro, the fraud-protection product, where it also has to speak the language of someone who arrives suspicious.
The engine already existed. An adaptation, not a new product. Rewriting the backend was off the table.
Incremental entry was mandatory. Only what could ship in parts fit.
Zero primary data. No analytics, no research budget. Every figure in the study is public or a competitor benchmark. That is declared because it is the constraint that weighed most on the outcome.
An abstract concept. Rule and automation are not banking vocabulary for an ordinary user. Teaching was half the problem.
Money moving on its own. Automation that moves a balance without confirmation is automation that frightens people. Trust was a requirement, not polish.
04 The problem in numbers
The demand exists. 31% of Brazilians say they have no emergency savings at all. In the lowest income brackets that figure reaches 48%. Anbima with Datafolha.
The mechanic works. N26's Round-Ups in Europe accumulated 12 million euros in under a year by rounding up card purchases into a savings sub-account.
The European anchor doesn't fit. 40.1% of employed people in Brazil were in informal work in 2022, 39.1 million people. IBGE, national household survey. Income arrives daily, weekly, or every two weeks.
Cross the three: the people who most need automatic saving are the ones who don't have a payday. The study's sticky notes list the four income rhythms as the first segmentation, before any screen: people paid daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly.
05 Exploration
The map before the screen
Four questions on sticky notes, answered before opening a single frame: What is it? What is it for? How do you use it? Why use it? The first two became, literally, the product's two opening blocks:
What are rules? Rules are automatic actions you can create to organize and save your money.
Can I customize them? The sky is the limit. You can shape rules your way, to match your lifestyle and your financial goals.
That is also where the user's vocabulary came from, and it is not the bank's: "help me control my finances", "help me lay out goals", "put money aside".
Three benchmarks, each with one question
IFTTT · how do you teach "if this, then that" to a layperson. The full flow mapped across eight screens. The finding is the language, not the layout: "If This Then That" carries the entire mental model in four words.
Medication reminder apps · how do you configure recurrence without looking like a cron job. Frequency in plain language, days as pills, time, stock count. The category that solved recurrence for a non-technical audience, and that nobody in fintech was looking at.
Onboarding across eight fintechs · how do you introduce an abstract feature in the first session. N26, PayPal, Revolut, credit score apps, loyalty apps, travel apps. The illustrated carousel is the category standard, and it is the worst of them: it teaches out of context.
What died
The dedicated onboarding carousel. Replaced by named templates inside the Rules home itself, with an explicit promise: "We built a few templates to help you automate your day to day, simply."
06 Decisions
D1 · The rule is a sentence, not a form
The creation screen is a sentence with blanks:
Whenever [something happens], do the following: [pick an action]
Trigger and action in running language, IFTTT style, not loose labelled fields.
Why: the expensive cost here is understanding, not filling in. A form solves the second and worsens the first.
D2 · The trigger vocabulary is Brazilian, not translated
This is the study's central decision. The trigger list is not the European one in another language:
| Trigger | What it reveals |
|---|---|
| I order from a food delivery app | delivery as a spending category, not a store |
| My team scores a goal | an emotional event, outside the statement |
| It's day XX of the month | the only one inherited from Europe |
| I make a transaction | generic, by card type |
| I split a purchase into instalments | instalments are a Brazilian institution |
| I hit a percentage of my card limit | the limit as a behavioural ruler |
| Total spend for the month | a ceiling, not a goal |
And the actions follow: put it in the sub-account, send me a notification by SMS, app, email or messaging, send an instant payment, round up to the next unit, add it to a spreadsheet, create a sub-account.
Why: automation is only useful if the trigger exists in the life of whoever uses it. Instant payments and instalments have no European equivalent, and "my team scores a goal" never shows up in a requirements list, it shows up in research.
What I gave up: parity with Europe. What I gained is a product that speaks the local language.
D3 · A named template is the on-ramp, not the tutorial
Templates arrive with a name and an emoji, not a description of a function:
Time is money ⏳ · Hunger control 🍔🍟 · My team helps me save ⚽ · Away-game trip 🛩 · Continental cup trip
And the template is editable: "You can customize any of the available rule templates."
Why: a name solves two problems at once. It teaches the concept through a concrete example, and it solves identification in the list. Without a name, "My rules" is a list of summaries the user rereads in full on every visit.
Question left open: if the name is optional, how do you identify the rule without it.
D4 · Trust is copy, and it is explicit
The product moves money on its own. Every risky screen carries a sentence that hands control back, and those sentences were written alongside the flow, not afterwards:
- "Your rule will never run if there isn't enough balance in the account."
- "You'll get a notification to approve your rule every time it runs."
- "You can edit, pause or delete any of your rules."
- "Don't worry, you're always in control of your rules."
Why: in a product that touches a balance, the objection is not usability, it is fear. Fear is answered with a sentence, not a padlock icon.
07 Craft
Two flows end to end, each proving a different pair:
Example 1 · Trigger: credit card transaction → Action: custom SMS notification. The reactive pair: the app watches and tells you. It includes the
custom message screen, with keyboard, and a ready-made example: "Whenever a
purchase is made above 💰 send me an SMS saying 'Stop spending now! 😱'"
Example 2 · Trigger: specific day of the month → Action: transfer to sub-account. The executive pair: the app watches and moves money.
Screens covered: empty state, suggestions, step-by-step creation, numeric keypad, sub-account picker (Trip, Emergencies, Saving), naming the rule, review, confirmation, the My Rules list with an Active state, editing, pausing and deleting.
08 Result
Never shipped. N26 closed its Brazilian operation in November 2023.
What the work left behind: the rule grammar as a sentence, the localized vocabulary of triggers and actions, named templates as an on-ramp, the trust copy, two complete flows, and three open questions documented for the team. The rule's name, identification without a name, and which income rhythm goes first in the incremental cut.
No product metric. This case is here for the reasoning, and it is labelled that way from the first line.
09 What I would do differently
I validated nothing with a user. The trigger vocabulary is the study's central bet, and it came from benchmarks and cultural intuition, not primary research. "My team scores a goal" could be the best idea in the study or the worst, and I don't know which. Today I would run five twenty-minute interviews before opening Figma. Five interviews fit in a week.
I segmented by income rhythm and didn't follow it through. The sticky notes open with four rhythms, daily to monthly, and the final flow says "it's day XX of the month". The study's strongest segmentation stayed on the wall and never reached the screen. That is the failure I would take to a retrospective first.
I treated it as adapting a feature, and the data suggests positioning. If 40% of employed people have no monthly salary, the problem reappears in onboarding, in credit, in collections. At the time I had no place to raise that. Today I would raise it.
Credits. Individual study, at Diletta Solutions, for the client N26 Brazil.
Sources
- N26 in Brazil, launch and shutdown: Brazil Journal, Finsiders, Tecnoblog
- N26 Automations, Rules, Round-Ups, Income Sorter: n26.com/en-eu/blog/new-in-n26-more-control
- Round-Ups, 12 million euros in under a year: n26.com, press release
- Informal work at 40.1% in 2022, 39.1 million people: IBGE, PNAD Contínua
- Emergency savings, 31% and 48% in the D/E income bracket: Raio-X do Investidor, Anbima and Datafolha
- Copy, triggers, actions and templates: taken from the study file itself