Touché

Pix made transfers instant, but not effortless in person. Paying the person in front of you still means asking for a key, scanning a code or copying a long string, and every manual step is a chance to send money to the wrong person. The friction isn’t the transfer itself; it’s identifying who receives it.

A calm, editorial interface: Instrument Serif and Inter on a paper and sage palette, with public-domain paintings toned to match. It follows the system’s light and dark appearance and adapts from iPhone SE to Pro Max, Dynamic Type up to AX1, iPad in both orientations, iPhone in landscape and a foldable iPhone. Everything runs on variables and components, documented for handoff.

Proximity should replace bureaucracy, not trust. The phones can find each other, but people still need to recognise who they are paying. So the recipient is never hidden: name, photo and a masked CPF appear before confirmation, and the receiver accepts on their own phone. Borrowed from gestures people already know, like NameDrop and contactless cards.

Type the amount, bring the phones close, confirm with Face ID. Authorization happens before the tap, so the gesture is the last step, not a security checkpoint. Receiving, requesting, splitting the bill and asking for money back reuse the same gesture, reachable from Home, the lock screen and the app icon.

Most of the work went into what goes wrong: Bluetooth off, the other phone not found, a dropped connection, a timeout, a declined payment, the Pix night limit. Every state has a clear way out, and a QR code is always one tap away. When a payment does go wrong, Ask for it back walks people through MED, the Central Bank’s refund mechanism, with status and outcomes.

392 screens and 18 prototype flows, with every link checked across light and dark and every device. The project passed the challenge stage, scored 40/40 in a heuristic critique and 20/20 in an iOS audit, and ships with a brand, motion pieces and a handoff page engineers can build from. Next, I’d measure time to pay in person, transfers sent to the wrong person and how many refund requests start in-app.

Proximity first, QR second. The QR code is still one tap away for phones that can't pair, but making it the default would have kept exactly what Touché removes: dictating, scanning and copying keys.

Both screens confirm. The payer sees the other person's face and name before the money moves, and the receiver accepts before it lands. One extra tap on each side, traded for the most common Pix mistake: paying the wrong person.

Asking for it back starts from the receipt. The MED request lives where the mistake is noticed, not in a help center, and it never promises a refund. It shows the steps and the 7-day review as they are.

Money apps tend to shout. Touché borrows the quiet of a museum wall instead: public-domain paintings by Hammershøi, Blossfeldt, Ilsted and Fantin-Latour sit behind each flow, toned into a paper-and-ink palette with a single sage accent.

The art never decorates a decision. It sets the pace, so the part that matters, who you are paying and how much, always reads first. Light and dark are treated as two times of day, not two themes.

Vilhelm Hammershøi: Interior with a Reading Lady; The Tall Windows, 1913; Landscape, 1900.

Karl Blossfeldt: Adiantum, 1928. Peter Ilsted: Evening Sun. Henri Fantin-Latour: Roses in a Bowl.

All works in the public domain.