Working with various internal and external stakeholders, I led the UX design process for a major peer-to-peer payment feature in a white-label banking partnership with a Fortune 50 company. The feature received overwhelmingly positive user reception, driving thousands of new account sign-ups and millions in transactions.
Project Name: Design a peer-to-peer payment feature for a white-labeling banking partner for web, iOS and Android devices.
Client and Project Type: BMTX Partner/Major Feature Request
Project Date: November 2nd, 2021 - September 15th, 2022 (~10 months)
I was tasked with crafting the user experience for a brand new peer-to-peer payment feature for one of our white label banking partners. As the lead designer, I was responsible for all aspects of the design process, including (but not limited to):
BMTX offers white-label banking solutions for their Fortune 500 partners. As part of an upcoming release for one of our partner’s (hereby known as “Partner X”) banking app, the BMTX XD team was tasked with creating a peer-to-peer payment solution that enabled users of the banking app (hereby known as “Bank USA”) to instantly send and receive payments with other Bank USA account holders across iOS, Android and web devices.
I worked with various stakeholders including external partners, product owners, developers and other designers to define and create an innovative solution while putting our users’ needs at the forefront of the design process. The resulting feature (hereby known as “Friend Pay”) provided users a way to quickly connect with other users of the banking platform and instantly send and receive money, fee-free. Friend Pay was released to positive user reception, and has become a proven customer acquisition channel with thousands of new account sign-ups and millions of dollars transacted just 60 days post-launch.
In a survey of customer account holders, the ability to send peer-to-peer payments was cited as the most requested new feature for Partner X’s banking app. A directive was put forward to include this feature as part of a major release update.
A business requirements document outlined key requirements set forth by project management and external partner stakeholders including product scope, assumptions, constraints, risks and dependencies. Several key technical constraints were in place - most importantly, integrating with existing peer-to-peer payment services such as Zelle could not be done due to licensing requirements.
Additionally, Partner X desired to have their own, mobile number driven peer payment solution to enable Bank USA customers to send each other funds within the Bank USA app that they could then market with-in Partner X’s ecosystem.
With our business requirements and feature use cases clearly defined, we set out to create the most compelling peer-to-peer payment feature possible.
We conducted a competitive analysis of existing peer-to-peer payment services including Chime, Varo and others, determining how other neobank platforms integrated peer-to-peer payment into their existing systems.
Working with product managers, developers and other designers, I conducted virtual whiteboard sessions to collaboratively design low-fidelity flows for every aspect of the feature. These flows include inviting and managing friend connections, sending money, and reviewing payment activity and transaction details.
Excerpt from an early low-fidelity whiteboarding session showcasing how a user might add and manage friend connections.
A screener survey was sent out to gather data on peer-to-peer payment usage and establish a user testing pool. Unfortunately, initial responses contained a lot of false data. An updated survey including CAPTCHA protections was sent out to rectify the issue and previously recorded responses that showed clear signs of botting behavior were removed.
A usability test plan was created to define what aspects of our proposed Friend Pay solution we would like to test. Questions to be answered included feature discoverability and ease of use. Users were recruited using data gathered from our screener survey. A test script and high-fidelity interactive mobile prototype was created to assist with testing. To learn more about the Friend Pay prototype used for testing, including scheduling of a demo, please contact me!
The study was conducted remotely with six mobile banking users of various backgrounds and technical expertise levels. Users were asked to walk through five task-based scenarios designed to test the functionality and usability of core aspects of the feature including first-time UX, adding connections, sending money, reviewing connections and viewing past payment activity.
Several tables were included in the one-pager highlighting various success metrics. The Per Task Results chart above highlights the success rate of participants broken out on a per task basis.
In general, users were pleased with the core functionality of the feature, with 5 out of 5 users responding “Yes” to the question “Does this feature align with your expectations of a peer-to-peer payment service/feature?” However, none of the users stated that they would utilize this feature over their currently preferred peer-to-peer payment service. This highlights a potential barrier to user adoption since the feature would only be available to existing Bank USA customers.
While none of the users indicated that they would use this feature over their currently preferred P2P payment service, several expressed interest in at least trying the feature if some sort of incentive was provided such as an interest rate bonus or $5 statement credit.
Our findings and recommendations were then presented to internal and external project stakeholders. Several recommendations were outlined in our user testing summary and recommendations one-pager including various labeling and copy updates and changes to screens to make the feature easier to discover and use including (but not limited to):
Additionally, several recommendations were identified to enhance this feature post-launch, such as the ability to schedule recurring payments or allow user to set a custom avatar. Unfortunately, the recommendation to include an incentive for first time use was not included in this release.
Updates to high-fidelity screens and flows were made based on our findings. Due to the highly-regulated nature of banking products, updated screens were then put through our rigorous screen approval process, including internal approvals from various internal departments including product, legal, compliance and others, as well as external approvals from various Partner X stakeholders.
An assortment of high-fidelity screens from the Friend Pay prototype used for user-testing.
Once final approvals were complete, high-fidelity screens and flows were handed-off to web and mobile development teams. I worked closely with both developers and QA testers throughout the development process to provide feedback and ensure the final product was representative of our design teams high standards.
The result of months of hard-work was the release of our most polished feature release to date. The feature garnered high praise from both BMTX and Partner X stakeholders:
“The [Friend Pay feature] is getting demo’d for [Partner Y] and I just want to say again AMAZING JOB. Not just the design, but the dilligence you put in making sure it was built correctly. Seeing it surrounded by everything else really shows how clean that set of screens are… 5 stars, you should be hella proud of that one.”
― Molly G., Former BMTX Design Director
Despite the previously identified barriers to adoption, the Friend Pay feature was a runaway success with Bank USA customers, resulting in over two million dollars in account transfers across thousands of users, and over one thousand referral based account sign-ups over the span of 60 days post feature launch.
The above metrics were pulled 60 days post feature release.
