Fula
A digital-first BNPL brand built for how Gen Z spends
Overview
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has taken off among young Gen Z consumers and the card-free market. CTBC Finance wanted to grow its user base in this space, so it set out to build an entirely new BNPL service — Fula.
As a brand-new CTBC sub-brand, Fula needed its own independent identity while still maintaining an appropriate connection to its parent brand, in order to earn consumers' trust.
Commissioned by CTBC Finance, UNIXIS handled the full scope of Fula's brand and product experience design — from the online application and payment experience to offline marketing at points of sale.
Unixis Thinking
We asked ourselves: What makes branding for a digital product different from branding in general?
For a brand built around a digital product as its core service, how should the overall design be planned so it resonates with the target audience and holds up across every medium?
Brand Craft
Brand & Logo
Born from the CTBC parent brand, Fula's smile for smarter living
"Open Fula, Open Life" is the slogan we crafted for the service — a reminder that once you open Fula, smarter spending unlocks a richer, more colorful everyday life.
Every element of the logo and core visual identity grew out of this concept, stepping beyond the parent brand's framework to give this new brand its own distinct energy and tone.
Fula's logo is drawn with clean, rounded strokes that embody the brand's personality — smart, confident, flexible — forming a cool, winking smile that tells the target audience: enjoy it in the blink of an eye.
Since most of Fula's touchpoints with users are digital, we designed the logo to adapt cleanly across platforms.
On the website and in offline settings, the full logo lockup carries the credibility of CTBC's endorsement. In small digital contexts like the app icon or browser tab, the icon-only mark — built from clean, simple lines — stays easy to recognize.
Starting from the core elements of Fula's main product, the app, we built the foundation of the brand experience as a whole — a vibrant color palette, an open-source typeface suited for digital interfaces, and more.
A logo style that's easy to break apart and extend also gave the brand a flexible set of supporting graphics.
Built on top of the color and type foundations, every component — down to the smallest detail — carries the brand's message of smart, confident, flexible, while keeping detailed product design highly consistent and efficient to scale.
Seamless Experience
User Experience
Brand spirit woven into the product — a flow that makes spending smarter
In designing the Fula app's experience, we shaped the priority of features, the hierarchy of screens, and the visual language so every layer reflects the brand's smart, confident spirit while staying close to what younger users need.
When a product fits its audience's needs and habits and becomes a genuine help in daily life, people trust it more — and use it more.
Found something I want at a store! Better open Fula and check how much credit I have left this month, so I don't go over my limit shopping with Fula!
On the app's home screen, we put the user's current available credit front and center, with marketing content, functional tools, and payments taking a back seat — so users can immediately see where they stand without getting lost among buttons and ads.
When several purchases are on installment plans at once, it's hard for users to work out how much they'll owe each month — creating a quiet, ongoing sense of pressure.
Fula's "Installment Helper" feature lets users set their own monthly repayment cap, so they can see at a glance whether their spending is within budget. We gave the Helper a playful character and a friendly tone of voice, making it easier and less stressful for users to check their accounts.
I've placed so many orders, all on installments — how much do I even owe each month? Can I actually afford this?
Luckily, Fula lets me set up an "Installment Helper" — it does the math for me and warns me if I'm going over my monthly budget.
Just finished setting up the Helper, and I already got a super cool achievement badge? I want to keep collecting! What's next...
Every time a user discovers a new way to use Fula, they're rewarded with a fun, character-filled achievement badge. These personalized visuals are designed to nudge younger users into exploring more of what Fula can do, building stronger engagement.
Like a game, membership badges change style and color as users level up — a way to reward loyal users who keep up with repayments with surprises and perks of their own.
Wait, my credit limit went up? Turns out if I keep repaying on time, my membership level rises and my credit gets bumped up automatically! Now I've got more to spend!
Personality Polish
Brand Personality
Refining every detail to create memorable moments full of brand personality
We noticed how Gen Z is drawn to visual punch and shareable moments, so at key touchpoints in the product, we used imagery and motion to sharpen the brand's personality and reinforce the idea of unlocking a more colorful life.
We wanted Fula to be more than smart and convenient — its style itself becomes something users identify with, making people more inclined to browse, use, and stay loyal to the brand.
Starting from the most basic iconography, we refined every detail down to motion sequences built from the brand's own character: a satisfied, confident smile animates on a successful application, while a touch of humor softens the moment even when things don't go through.
On "Pay" — the one feature every user relies on — we echo the idea of "Open Fula, Open Life" by bringing vibrant color to the instant you tap the Pay button, a reminder that every use of Fula brings a little delight.
Fula's responsive (Responsive Web) homepage carries the "Open Fula, Open Life" narrative, presenting the concept of installments through clean, energetic illustrations — moving in step with the app to guide users into the Fula service experience.
Marketing ads are often the first place most users encounter Fula. We designed a range of templates for Fula's social media visuals and defined a color-selection guide, giving future campaign or merchant posts the flexibility to adapt to any theme while staying true to Fula's personality.
Complete Guidelines
Design Guideline
Building brand and product design guidelines to hand the tools of marketing and operations back to the client
A brand shaped by a thorough plan and clear guidelines does more than create a good product — it helps the service go the distance, both internally and externally.
Internally, the design guidelines cover everything from foundational typography, colors, and logo rules to product components and page layouts — each documented with complete values and extension logic. This detailed record of craft lets the design be handed on to future collaborators, so Fula can keep growing under the client's stewardship while maintaining a consistent brand quality.
Externally, because the guidelines are defined for both online and offline contexts, Fula's mature brand elements can be applied across marketing media — social platforms, ads in different formats, standees and more — faithfully expressing the brand's smart, playful character in every setting and bringing the Fula payment experience to a wider audience.
*For the Fula app, website, and online/offline marketing materials, UNIXIS designed the key pages and defined the design guidelines, while the CTBC Finance team and its partner vendors handled the extended design work and execution.
Unixis Perspective
Branding built around a digital product as its core service can carry through consistently — shaping the key elements a product's usage context needs, so the brand's spirit is genuinely woven into the experience.
The product is never just a rigid tool, and the brand is never just surface-level graphic design — together, they reinforce each other to create the greatest value for the people using the service.
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