Venmo is a mobile-based payment service that provides fast, safe, and social payments amongst friends and family. Users commonly use Venmo to split bills, such as rent, utilities, and subscriptions. The goal of this project is to improve the way users split bills to make it faster and easier.
92% user satisfaction with new feature
As someone who uses Venmo to split bills with friends, I encountered pain points when requesting and paying friends for bills every month. I kept performing the same task, with the same people, and the same amount of money, every single time.
I realized there’s an opportunity to improve the way users pay and request money for recurring transactions.
To validate the problem, I recruited 4 participants who use Venmo to split bills monthly with friends and family.
The top needs Venmo users have are the following:
Users find it tedious to have to repeat the same action every month.
Users noticed that ‘Top People’ doesn’t accurately reflect who users frequently interact with.
Users worry about accidentally paying a large amount of money instead of requesting
To further validate these insights and test demand for a feature to help automate payments, I sent out an survey and collected 21 responses. Here are some of the key insights:
of users think their Top Contacts list is inaccurate
of users have confused the pay and request buttons
of users are uncomfortable reminding friends to pay
I analyzed Venmo’s top competitors to learn how Venmo compared to these apps. I focused mainly on features paying and requesting, especially with multiple people and recurring transactions.
There is an opportunity for Venmo to stand out amongst its competitors by improving how its users splits bills on the app.
Since I was adding features to the existing app, I prioritized making it feel familiar and seamlessly integrated with the interface and structure. Mapping out the architecture of the app helps me see where adding features would make the most sense.
Next, I created a user flow to visualize all the ways a user can make and request payments.
Pain point: Users have to manually pay and request for bills every month, which became tedious, especially when transacting with larger groups.
Solution: Users can automate Venmo payments and control when, how much, how frequently, etc.
Pain point: Currently, the algorithm for choosing ‘Top People’ doesn’t accurately reflect who users frequently interact with.
Solution: Users can now customize their ‘Top People’ and choose who gets placed in the list.
Pain point: Users are worried that they will accidentally pay instead of requesting from their friends, especially when dealing with large payments.
Solution: Users are prompted to confirm the payment details before the transaction goes through.
I conducted an unmoderated usability test with 24 participants to validate my designs. Feedback from the test helped me make informed decisions on what areas needed improvement.
I learned that we can’t just add any feature we want. We have to consider the product’s mission and goal and make sure that the new feature doesn’t derail from it. For example, Venmo’s mission is to provide fast, safe, social payments. The features I added aligned with ‘fast’ and ‘safe’.
For this sprint, I focused on developing the MVP features. There were a couple ideas that came up that could be a great addition such as a calendar view of payments and creating friend groups to further optimize the experience.
