Newly licensed fintech: the double trust dilemma.

When a fintech has just received its NHNN license, two opposing reactions often emerge within the founding team. One side wants the brand to look modern, youthful, and different from traditional banks. The other worries that if it looks too "startup," customers will not dare to deposit money. Both concerns are valid. And that is exactly why the identity challenge for a newly licensed fintech is harder than for most other sectors.

The first barrier is not competition.

In most industries, new brands must overcome market indifference. In finance, the first barrier is different: it’s the fear of losing money. Customers are not unaware of you because you are not well-known enough. They haven’t used you because they don’t trust you enough to put their assets in your hands.

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 reports that the financial sector achieves a global trust level of 64%, but ranks near the bottom compared to other sectors. This is the starting point for every fintech: not starting from a neutral point, but starting from a point of suspicion. Brand design is not something that builds trust for you, but it is the first thing customers see before deciding whether to learn more.

The trap of safe blue

When they need to look trustworthy, founding teams tend to run toward deep blue, neutral sans-serif fonts, and formal language. The result is a brand that looks serious but that no one remembers. Around 61% of tech company logos use blue. Dozens of new fintechs launch every year on top of that. When everyone looks the same, no one truly owns the "trustworthy" signal. It becomes background noise.

Nubank in Brazil is a noteworthy counter-example. They chose purple, a color no one in the region's financial sector owned, and built the entire identity around transparency and simplicity. The result was not because purple is "psychologically" trustworthy, but because Nubank consistently delivered on what it promised, and purple became a distinctive, unmistakable identity asset. Color is an asset to own, not a universal psychological signal.

A brand is not a logo. A brand is a person's natural perception of a product, service, or organization.

A brand is not a logo. A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.

Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap

Trust architecture: two parallel layers

Instead of choosing between "fresh" and "safe," a new fintech needs to build its identity in two layers that work at the same time.

The first layer is credibility. This is the foundation you cannot skip: an NHNN license displayed clearly, not buried in a footnote, a privacy policy written in language readers can understand, a complaint-handling process that can be verified, and specific figures instead of vague adjectives. "Licensed by the NHNN under Decree X" says more than "a leading secure platform." Credibility must be specific, not decorative.

The second layer is accessibility. This is what determines whether customers want to try: a clear interface right from the first screen, conversational language instead of legal text, and a fast onboarding experience so customers don’t drop off. Freshness does not mean being overly cheerful. It means not causing unnecessary friction.

These two layers do not contradict each other. They only conflict when the design team cannot distinguish where each layer needs to appear. The privacy policy page needs the trust layer. The thank you screen after a successful transaction can be warmer. Error messages need to be clear and trustworthy, not witty.

Tone: consistent voice, flexible tone

One of the most common mistakes of new fintech companies is choosing one of two extremes in tone and rigidly applying it across the board. Either as serious as a central bank press release, or as cheerful as an entertainment app. Both are wrong.

The principle of operation is more about distinguishing between voice and tone. Voice is the core personality of the brand, which does not change with the situation. For example: transparent, straightforward, not beating around the bush. Tone is the nuance adjusted according to the specific context. The same organization can use a warm voice when welcoming new users and a confident voice when explaining the refund policy. This is not inconsistency. This is consistency at a deeper level.

Proof instead of promises.

Financial customers do not believe in taglines. They believe in verifiable evidence. That means: the number of transactions processed successfully instead of "a stable platform," the names of partner banks instead of "working with reputable institutions," actual processing times instead of "fast and convenient."

Every touchpoint in the user journey is a chance to build up evidence. A clear transaction confirmation builds more trust than a polished About Us page. A complaint answered on time says more than a meticulously designed logo. A brand is not only what you say about yourself. According to Wally Olins, a brand is behavior: how the product works, how your environment shapes perception, how your team reacts when something goes wrong.

For newly licensed fintech companies, this is good news. You don’t need a 20-year history to build trust. You need 6 months of consistent, transparent operations, without letting customers lose money due to your mistakes. Good design facilitates this by placing the right information in the right place, at the right time, for the right people.