Inspiration
Digital payments have made sending and receiving money easier, but they have also created new opportunities for phishing, impersonation, fake payment requests and online financial scams.
We noticed that people often know they should be careful, but when they encounter a suspicious message, payment request or link, they may not know what to do next.
This inspired us to build SaferStep, a platform focused on turning uncertainty into clear, practical safety actions. Our goal is to make digital financial safety easier to understand and accessible to students, first-time investors and senior citizens.
What it does
SaferStep is an AI-assisted financial safety platform that helps users make more informed decisions when dealing with suspicious digital financial activity.
Its key capabilities include:
- Scam Awareness: Helps users recognise common phishing attempts, suspicious messages and fraudulent requests.
- Link and QR Verification: Supports safer evaluation of suspicious links and QR-based requests.
- Guided Safety Actions: Provides understandable next steps instead of simply displaying warnings.
- Payment Safety: Promotes safer digital payment practices and encourages users to verify requests before acting.
- Financial Learning: Makes online financial safety easier to understand through practical guidance.
SaferStep is designed to guide users towards safer decisions, not to guarantee that a transaction or platform is fraud-free.
How we built it
We developed SaferStep as a web-based application with an accessible interface and an AI-assisted guidance experience.
The application combines a structured financial safety workflow with AI-powered conversational assistance. The experience is designed to help users understand a situation, identify potential risks and find appropriate next steps.
We focused on making the interface straightforward, reducing technical language and organising guidance around real-world user situations.
The project is deployed on Vercel, with its source code maintained in GitHub.
Challenges we ran into
One of our biggest challenges was making financial safety guidance useful without overwhelming users with technical information.
We also had to think carefully about the risks of AI-generated guidance in a sensitive area like financial security. Incorrect or overconfident responses could lead users to make unsafe decisions.
We addressed these challenges by focusing on clear explanations, practical next steps and responsible guidance. SaferStep is intended to support user awareness and decision-making, not replace banks, payment providers or official cybercrime reporting channels.
Another challenge was designing an experience that could work for people with different levels of digital and financial literacy.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Built and deployed the SaferStep web application.
- Developed a user-centred approach to digital financial safety.
- Brought scam awareness, verification guidance and practical safety actions into one experience.
- Designed the experience for students, first-time investors and senior citizens.
- Created a platform that focuses on what users should do next, rather than only warning them about possible risks.
We are particularly proud of the central idea behind SaferStep: making the next safe action easier to understand.
What we learned
We learned that building a useful AI-powered product requires more than integrating a model into an application.
The quality of the user experience, reliability of information, clarity of recommendations and responsible handling of sensitive situations are equally important.
We also learned to approach financial safety as a user journey. People need to understand the warning signs, evaluate the situation and know which action to take next.
What's next for SaferStep
Our next priorities are to strengthen the accuracy and reliability of guidance, improve the verification experience, expand accessible financial education and test the application with users from different age groups.
We also aim to explore deeper integration with trusted payment infrastructure and developer platforms, including relevant PayPal capabilities, to make safer payment experiences more practical.
Our long-term vision is simple:
SaferStep aims to make every digital financial decision a more informed and safer one.
