WAC SIGNAL001Brand Dive: Kuda · August 2026 · By WACPeople
2 min read
What happens when a bank stops looking like a bank?
A dive into Kuda's new identity, its changing ambition, and the bigger question behind the redesign.
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2 min read
A dive into Kuda's new identity, its changing ambition, and the bigger question behind the redesign.
Everyone is arguing about the new Kuda logo.
Fair enough.
But Kuda has given us something much more interesting to talk about.
It is trying to stop being understood as just a bank.
The language is right there.
Kuda calls itself “the money app for Africans.” Its current proposition goes beyond a bank account into saving, spending, sending and investing money across borders. Kuda itself has described the product as “more than just a banking app.”
(Kuda Help Center)
That changes the brief.
The public conversation is still largely happening around the surface.
The logo.
The colours.
Whether the new identity feels better or worse.
Meanwhile, Kuda is quietly making a much bigger claim:
We want to own a much bigger part of your relationship with money.
And that is where this gets interesting.
Because “the money app for Africans” is not a small positioning change.
It is an enormous creative territory.
Money already touches almost everything Africans are building and participating in.
So if Kuda genuinely wants to occupy that territory, a new identity is only the beginning.
Kuda’s ambition has grown.
Has the experience around the brand grown with it?
That is the gap we see.
A banking app can tell you what it does.
A money brand has to become part of how people actually live, move and think about money.
That requires more than another campaign explaining features.
It requires things people can actually experience.
Things they can participate in.
Things that make the positioning feel true before they even open the app.
Not:
“What campaign can I make for Kuda?”
That is waiting for the brief.
Ask instead:
What does Kuda need to build for this ambition to become believable?
Maybe it is an experience.
Maybe it is a cultural platform.
Maybe it is a community.
Maybe it is a new way of helping African creators, founders or businesses move money.
Maybe it is something nobody has thought of yet.
That’s the opportunity.
The brief is hiding inside the positioning.
Kuda has told us where it wants to go.
Don’t spend all your energy debating how it looks getting there.
Look at the distance between the ambition and the reality.
Then design for the gap.
Because if Kuda wants to become the money app for Africans, there are hundreds of things it could build, enable and make possible that do not exist yet.
Those are the interesting briefs.
Don’t wait for Kuda to send you one.
The opportunity
Kuda has made the ambition visible. Now build something that could help make it real. We're looking for pitches, experiences, platforms, community ideas, cultural formats and product thinking.
See something worth investigating?