Capital One Financial Corporation has acquired Level Money, providing more evidence that it is indeed the most design-conscious financial institution on the planet. Level Money is a money management app based out of San Francisco. It allows users to view all their accounts from multiple banks, and monitor transactions. It simplifies budgeting and forecasting so that users can easily determine how much, or how little, money they have to spend. The capabilities of the app can, for the most part, be found in Capital One’s online banking app. What sets Level Money apart is the user experience design. Its data visualization makes understanding your current state of financial health a breeze. Rather than attempting to reinvent the Capital One app and mobile banking website, they purchased a ready-made design success. The entire Level Money team will stay together, and their product will remain a separate and standalone app, available for both iOS and Android devices.

This isn’t the bank’s first UX investment. In October of last year, Capital One acquired Adaptive Path, one of the most well known user experience design firms. The name may not sound familiar, but if you used the Internet during the web 2.0 era, you almost certainly experienced their handiwork. Remember when you first started being able to see search results while you were still typing your search query? Adaptive Path was one of the early pioneers of that technology, and they gave it the name Ajax.

Exceptional user experience had always been their goal, and so with their purchase, it became a Capital One priority. The financial institution known for its humorous credit card commercials with famed actors Alec Baldwin and Samuel L. Jackson has been on quite the startup buying spree. It previously purchased Bundle, an app that allowed users to compare the popularity of local businesses based on transaction volumes, as well as BankOns, an app that allowed banks to reward users based on location and transaction histories.

Consumers, especially Millennials, are learning to expect more from the companies with which they choose to do business. Providing a basic app, or a poorly designed web experience, can negatively impact brand loyalty, even if most customers primarily use brick and mortar locations. Companies like Capital One, and Walmart, who are making big investments in design and technology, will have a better chance of maintaining and growing their user bases.

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