Akcenta · B2B Forex Platform
Digital transformation design for a B2B forex trading platform built for speed, trust, and financial clarity.
A friend of mine was standing up akcenta.digital — the digital arm of an established Czech forex broker, with one mandate: transform a platform accumulated in layers over the years into something clients could trust with real financial decisions. He asked me to join. I've been there since 2022, first as the only designer, then in collaboration with three other designers.
A platform built for professionals
Akcenta's clients are corporate treasurers and finance managers who execute currency transactions as part of their operational workflow — buying EUR to pay suppliers, locking in forward rates to hedge risk, managing positions across multiple accounts. Every second of friction in that process has a cost.
When I joined in 2022, the platform had accumulated years of incremental changes without a consistent design language. Different table styles, inconsistent states, no clear information hierarchy across screens. The brief was to transform that into a coherent product clients could trust — and to set the direction for everything that came after.
Desktop, dashboards, and trading flows
The trading desk is the core of the product. Clients open it to see current market rates, initiate trades, and monitor their open positions. Decisions happen fast. The interface needs to surface the right information at the right time — rate movements, margin requirements, confirmed transactions — without creating visual noise that undermines confidence.
I focused on hierarchy first. The information a trader needs to act on is different from the information they need to monitor or review. Rates, balances, and active orders belong above the fold. History, settings, and administrative detail belong behind a tab or a drawer. Getting that separation right reduced cognitive load without simplifying the product.
Confirmation flows and error states received particular attention. In a financial context, every message carries real weight: a wrong rate, a missed confirmation, or an ambiguous error state can have direct operational consequences. These states had to be defensible, not just visually consistent.
Mobile order management
Not every corporate client is at their desk. Finance managers approve transactions from airports, meetings, and home offices. The mobile product needed to cover the essential operations — viewing positions, approving pending orders, checking transaction status — without trying to replicate the full desktop experience on a small screen.
That scoping decision matters. Mobile financial apps often fail by cramming too much onto small screens. For Akcenta, mobile is the approval layer, not the trading floor. The interaction model is simpler, the information density lower, and the critical action — confirm or reject — is always reachable without scrolling.
Growing the team and new financial services
I started as the sole designer on the project. As the scope grew, I grew the team with me — eventually to three designers, while continuing to own product direction and the newer service concepts.
Two of those were particularly complex to design: FX forwards, where clients lock in an exchange rate for a future transaction, and lending, where the platform extends credit against open positions. Both required interface patterns that didn't exist in the existing design system — longer time horizons, risk indicators, and approval workflows that could involve multiple stakeholders on the client side.
The design challenge with forward products is making a future commitment feel as legible as a spot trade. Dates, rates, and exposure need to be readable at a glance, with enough context to make the decision confidently — not just enough context to technically complete the form.
Outcome
The platform now has a consistent visual and interaction language across desktop and mobile, with a pattern library the team can extend without creating divergence. The forward and lending concepts are in development.
The deeper outcome is process: a design team that can work in a high-stakes financial context without slowing down engineering, and a product direction that can absorb new financial services without fragmenting the experience or creating parallel visual systems.