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My Role

UX Designer

As the sole UX Designer, I owned Venu's end-to-end experience strategy, from problem definition to implementation. I translated complex regulatory constraints into intuitive user flows.

The Team

Project Managers: Shweta, Shreya

1 UX Designer & Researcher, 2 Product managers, 2 Backend developers, 2 Frontend developers & 1 QA

Duration

1 Year 7 Months (Dec 2023 – Jul 2025)

Phase 1 - Dec’23 - Dec’24, Phase 2 - Dec’24 - Jul-25

📍Project Context

When MainStreet Bank saw a thriving $33B legal cannabis market trapped in a cash‑only crisis, they knew they had to step in with a regulated, bank‑backed solution. That solution became

Venu - a mobile payment app built to replace risky ATM runs and gray-market “cashless ATMs” with secure, FDIC-insured digital transactions.

The challenge was clear:

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Federal restrictions prevent major Financial institutions [Visa, Mastercard, PayPal] from processing cannabis purchases, leaving 88% of dispensaries cash‑dependent and forcing customers to navigate costly fees, safety risks, and regulatory uncertainty.

We set out to design an experience that turned complex compliance into a seamless interaction - one where users could verify, link, and pay with confidence in minutes.

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Where it all began →

📝 Background and research

Only 160 out of over 10,000 U.S. banks work with cannabis clients. That’s less than 2%. The rest? Hands-off due to federal restrictions

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📈 $33B+ Market

The U.S. cannabis economy is booming - growing 15% YoY

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💵 **88% Cash-Only

M**ost dispenseries still don’t accept digital or card payments.

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❌ No federal processor:

Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Amex . etc. all prohibit cannabis transactions

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This means Cash in the market. Lots of it! which comes with risk and massive compliance overhead.

💡 Key Insights

To design an experience that truly matters, we mapped out all the key insights, psychological tolls, and technical friction points through a survey shared by the MNSB Team.

🎯 Strategic Goals

These goals were directly derived from the key insights, transforming user pain and policy constraints into clear, actionable priorities for the product.