Toss's early days can be summarized in one sentence: "Make every decision in front of the customer." The innovation that Toss created back then didn't stem from functional complexity, but from sensory simplicity. The language of buttons, friction in flows, anxiety while waiting. By erasing the inconveniences customers felt through UI/UX completeness, they shook up existing financial practices. While other players had to simultaneously consider regulations, legacy systems, and stakeholder interests, Toss first asked what would touch the user's fingertips. This choice was both a challenge to the established market and a restoration of common sense from the user's perspective.
However, company growth also means the era when simplicity could beat complexity has ended. IPO and revenue pressure, business portfolio diversification, regulation and risk management. All of this demands transforming 'customer-centricity' from a single belief into an operable system. Simply providing beautiful experiences to users doesn't guarantee sustainability. As terms like EBITDA, CAC payback period, and unit economics become important, 'company survival' gradually enters the center of decision-making rather than customers. The dilemma many organizations face at this point is clear: How do we simultaneously satisfy 'user-centricity' and 'business sustainability'?
This change doesn't mean Toss has deteriorated. It's more of a signal that the resolution of perspective has increased. They've moved from a period of maximizing speed by asking "Why make it so complicated?" to a stage of handling "reasons why it must be complex." Regulatory compliance, security, partnership structures, diversified revenue models. None of these are unrelated to customer-perceived value. Rather, they play a role in supporting safety and trust at invisible layers, solidifying the foundation of experience. The problem is when that complexity rises to the surface and erodes the intuitiveness and simplicity that customers experience. At the point when bureaucratization disguised as maturity begins, the customer's voice becomes smaller amidst the noise of KPIs.
So what's needed? A redefinition of 'user-centricity.' An expansion from aesthetics that move customers to operational practicality that protects customers and saves their time. For this, we need to look at two dashboards simultaneously.
First, the user dashboard. Revisit retention rates, time to problem resolution, complaint/churn reasons, NPS. These are indicators that determine whether we've reduced customers' time, anxiety, and effort.
Second, the business dashboard. Contribution margin, unit economics, risk costs, regulatory compliance costs. These are indicators that determine survival and expansion.
Looking at only one side causes you to lose your sense of direction. You need to look at both dashboards together, but have organizational consensus on priority rules when the two values conflict. For example, consensus like "decisions regarding customer trust and safety beat short-term revenue."
Another axis is the separation of exploration and exploitation. If all teams run simultaneously like in the early days, execution power increases, but risks and opportunity costs surge rapidly in the mature stage. Conversely, if everything is stabilized, market sensitivity becomes dull. The solution is a dual operating system. Organizations responsible for core revenue operate centered on efficiency, predictability, and compliance, while new business and experimental areas maintain independent speed with principles of customer problem exploration and quick disposal. What's important here is not the success of exploration, but the speed of learning from exploration. And the existence of translation mechanisms that allow that learning to systematically flow into the execution organization's roadmap.
The role of UI/UX also changes. In the early days, UX was interpreted as 'beauty and simplicity.' Now it must play an architectural role in hiding the complexity of scale. Even if segmented risk policies, differential rates, and partner-specific exceptions exist behind the same buttons and flows, users should only see consistent rules and predictable results. Design evolves from 'surface aesthetics' to 'design of invisible rules.' If this transition fails, customers experience complexity; if it succeeds, customers don't even know complexity exists.
Here, we need to return to our original intention again. Reinterpreting the original intention not as 'naivety' but as an attitude of hypothesis validation. In the early days, unconditional growth and user-centric thinking were weapons. Now we need bidirectional ability to translate user problems into the language of money and translate money constraints back into the user's language. We must continuously experiment with and rationalize what value customers are willing to pay for, what costs and risks are involved in providing that value, and whether that difference connects to steady cash flow. It's not about abandoning customers, but elevating customer-centricity to operable economics.
Ultimately, Toss's next chapter is summarized like this: Early purity gave direction, and current structure provides sustainability. Growth is a reciprocating movement between these two. Not losing the question "Why is it so complicated?" while showing through execution "Let's still make it feel simple." When we sophisticate the organization's grammar so that reducing customer time and anxiety results in managing company profit and risk, Toss can become mature without losing its original intention.
Customer-centricity hasn't disappeared. It has just evolved into a more difficult form.