• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 3, 2014

What's in your wallet? Perhaps something designed by the creative team at Adaptive Path. Capital One has acquired the Francisco-based design and user experience firm.

Adaptive Path will remain in a small space on Pier 1 in San Francisco logistically, but will become a captive design house within Capital One. The company will keep the brand name and the team will remain together as a group, but will close its consulting business to focus on solving experience design problems for Capital One.

A great customer experience becomes a necessity in a world where advertising continues to evolve. Some experts believe brand experience is the future of advertising. Consumers must not only find value in the brand, but in the experience.

Joining Capital One means Adaptive Path will need to discontinue working with prior clients, like NPR, Flickr, Harvard Business Review, Twitter and Airbnb.

While joining a bank may seem like an odd fit for Adaptive Path, Chief Creative Officer Jesse James Garrett explains that "when it comes to truly human-centered thinking, Capital One is among the top tier of all the organizations I have worked with in 15 years of consulting."

Capital One also recently announced a mobile wallet app for cardholders running on iOS. The app must be used on a device with pattern recognition for authentication, which requires the user to trace a unique pattern on the screen of the phone with a finger. The feature is called SureSwipe. The app gives consumers information on balances and rewards.