The tri-fold strategy: How Credit Karma is turning UX, marketing, and product into Gen Z’s financial on-ramp

On a Tuesday morning in Chicago, 21-year-old Sabrina opens her banking app, a budgeting spreadsheet, and a dozen browser tabs about credit scores. She’s trying to figure out how to get her first credit card without accidentally tanking her credit, how car insurance even works, and why every site seems to speak a language she doesn’t quite understand. She’s smart. She’s digital-first. But she’s overwhelmed.

Sabrina’s experience isn’t unusual; it’s emblematic of a broader issue. Gen Z is stepping into adulthood carrying both the weight of financial uncertainty and an expectation that technology should just work. So, when it comes to their first credit journey, they expect financial products to feel less like spreadsheets and more like guidance.

That expectation is forcing financial platforms to reimagine how they’re built: conceived, designed, and delivered. And a few companies are actively leaning into this shift, including Credit Karma.

The company is reengineering its product experience – from UX to AI-driven personalization to cultural marketing – to meet this generation where their financial story begins.

“Our Gen Z members, who are often just beginning their financial journeys and can feel overwhelmed by the numerous decisions they face, are looking to us for step-by-step guidance to make meaningful progress toward their financial goals,” says Natasha Madan, Chief Marketing Officer at Credit Karma.

UX and Redesign: Making ‘Where do I start?’ feel simple

Gen Z checks their credit scores roughly 1.5 times more often than older generations, according to Harris Poll and FICO research. Many of these 18- to 24-year-olds use Credit Karma as their financial on-ramp. The firm’s internal member data shows that checking and improving their credit score is the top reason this group joins the platform: 58% of this demographic compared to 43% of older users. 

Additionally, Madan draws attention to the thought patterns that guide Gen Z’s money decisions and their expectations of financial tools.

“Gen Z often feels overwhelmed by financial decisions, with 46% of young adults finding ‘figuring out where to start’ the most challenging part,” she says. “They are navigating unfamiliar topics, can be emotionally overwhelmed, have shorter attention spans, and want to see immediate progress.”

Those insights were directly translated into a redesign of Credit Karma’s app. Internal teams prioritized features for Gen Z, including credit simulations, actionable tips with beginner-friendly language, and tools for new-to-credit users. The app was also updated to make features like the Insurance and Cash Flow hubs more visible and easier to navigate.

Credit Karma’s Insurance product connects users with partners for quotes, ultimately helping them save a significant portion on their monthly expenses. Similarly, the Cash Flow feature helps members understand their current cash flow across accounts. It educates them on areas where they might be overspending compared to others in a similar financial situation.

The app design philosophy is to celebrate small wins: nudging users when they make an on-time payment or hit a credit milestone, making financial progress feel both attainable and motivating.

This approach isn’t about dumbing down the product. It’s about clarity, momentum, and confidence-building. “We want to empower our Gen Z members with the tools and guidance they need to start their financial journey: to build their credit, save for significant purchases like their first car, and navigate other important financial decisions like buying their own auto insurance for the first time — all with confidence,” adds Madan.

Marketing meets Brand Identity: Bridging culture and product

Getting the app and its tools in front of Gen Z is a separate effort altogether. For this consumer segment, brands don’t get to exist in their world without showing up authentically. Recognizing this, Credit Karma approaches marketing not as a shiny exterior, but as an extension of its product.

“Our content and campaign strategies are designed to work hand in hand with the product, not as a separate marketing layer,” Madan says. “We know Gen Z, in particular, expects brands to show up authentically and add real value, so our focus is on creating experiences that are actionable, social, and fun.”

That means meme-driven content, creator partnerships, and cultural aesthetics all feed into actual product use. 

Other avenues through which Credit Karma aligns marketing with brand identity and product include:

• Social media campaigns: Social media is a crucial testing ground for Credit Karma. The team pilots ideas there first, such as gamified finance quizzes, and then folds the most engaging ones back into the app. “It’s a constant feedback loop between what resonates culturally and what drives real financial progress for our members,” explains Madan.

• A fresh breed of collabs: Credit Karma is also forming a partnership with TikTok, alongside TurboTax, to create a sponsored personal finance advice hub within TikTok. “We are working with top-tier creators to embed the Credit Karma and TurboTax ecosystem directly into the conversations Gen Z is already having about money,” shares Madan. “This is a first-of-its-kind hub for TikTok that centers on money and positions both brands as the best solutions for personal finance.”

• The college student ambassador program: Another piece of the puzzle is the company’s annual college student ambassador program in partnership with TurboTax. This year’s program kicked off last weekend at the Intuit Mountain View campus in the San Francisco Bay Area, with 150 college students participating. Students create authentic social content around credit, taxes, and money management, while also feeding live insights back to the internal team. The ambassadors represent Credit Karma and TurboTax on social channels to drive awareness and education across their campus communities. For Credit Karma, Madan explains, beyond impressions and posts, it’s more about translating cultural relevance into actionable financial progress.

The kickoff event for this year’s college ambassador program – Image Courtesy: Credit Karma

Product Development: Turning behavior into engineering decisions

UX and marketing are the visible layers of a deeper shift in product and engineering. Behind the scenes, Credit Karma’s product roadmap is increasingly shaped by data on Gen Z behaviors.

The product development process starts with market research and competitive mapping, then zeroes in on qualitative analysis to understand the ‘why’ behind trends: the underlying motivation or pain point that drives them. “Product features are then developed to solve challenging problems, building upon existing solutions,” explains Madan.

This is how features like the Insurance hub and Cash Flow tracker came to life.

Additionally, “We dive deeper into the research to help us assess brand alignment, ensuring the feature fits our brand’s identity and ladders into our ultimate goals for how we see the app working for our members,” notes Madan. 

What determines whether a Gen Z trend becomes a product feature or simply informs marketing is how it aligns with business goals: Will building a feature help acquire new Gen Z users, and does it increase engagement/retention of existing users?

Balancing Generations: Architecting experiences for Gen Z without losing everyone else

The biggest risk in building and designing Gen Z-first experiences is alienating older users. Credit Karma’s strategy is to personalize, not segment. Instead of creating a Gen Z-targeted app, the firm is focused on making its core product widely accessible – simple enough for beginners but smart enough to personalize for all.

“Credit Karma is a personalized product by nature, and AI enables us to be even more personalized,” Madan explains. 

This means that a Millennial trying to refinance a loan and a Gen Zer applying for their first credit card can use the same product but experience it differently, with content, recommendations, and UX nudges tailored to their respective stages in their financial lives.

“We focus on the needs that overlap across our member segments,” notes Madan. “Instead of creating siloed features, we evolve existing and upcoming core experiences to be more beginner-friendly, an approach that strengthens the product as a whole and creates a halo effect for other members with similar needs.” 

[Sidebar:] How internal cross-functional teams collaborate to keep Credit Karma culturally relevant

Building for Gen Z requires a company that can move quickly and stay culturally aware without compromising its product foundation. At Credit Karma, that balance happens through what CMO Natasha Madan calls “circular collaboration.”

Natasha Madan, CMO at Credit Karma: At Credit Karma, collaboration between various teams, including product, UX, and marketing, is grounded in a shared goal: helping our members solve their most complex and frustrating money problems. That focus keeps us aligned, even if perspectives might differ. Naturally, each brings their own unique lens to any problem. Product may prioritize functionality, UX focuses on usability, and marketing emphasizes clarity and resonance. When differing opinions arise, we lean on data and our members’ needs. 

The product marketing function is truly the glue that brings consumer insights, competitive landscape, and product together, to help us build and market products that will resonate with our audiences the most. Our product marketing managers work alongside our cross-functional mission teams (insights, product, design, channel marketers, etc.) to establish the pain points and gaps our users have, coupled with gaps in the market, and work with our product teams to build products that are unique and truly resonant. When it comes to time to market, we also make sure the way we go to market (what we say, how we say it, etc.) is relevant to the lives of our members. It is a circular process, so we test, learn, and iterate quickly to see what will really drive impact.

We have a culture of experimentation and collaboration that ensures our decisions aren’t driven by hierarchy or opinion, but by what is best for our members, especially as we continue to evolve to meet the expectations and evolving needs of our Gen Z members.