A new way to send recurring payments in Venmo

For this project, I was tasked with building a recurring payments feature for Venmo. Venmo is an American mobile payment service founded in 2009 that caters to friends and family who wish to split bills, e.g. for movies, dinner, rent, or event tickets.

High-Level Design Objective: Create a feature for Venmo that lets user set recurring payments in an easy and enjoyable way, while keeping in line with Venmo’s style and functionality.

Duration: 8 weeks

The problem area

Venmo is popular with millennials (21-38 year-olds) because of its simplicity and quick delivery when it comes to sending money electronically.

When it comes to recurring payments (like rent and utilities), millenials need to keep track of them in their calendar so that they can remember to send the payments each month. Forgetting a payment can lead to consequences like late fees and problems with their landlords, making many millennials anxious and worried about missing a payment.

Looking at current competitors

I started by comparing competitors’ recurring payment features in order to pinpoint the steps in the process, as well as possible pain points.

Interviewing participants and defining our users

Interviews with participants helped me understand the problem in a better way.

1. What are the most widely used recurrent payments that millenials need to send?

My research concluded that monthly rent and utility bills were the most frequent payments.

2. To whom are they sending these payments?

They are sending the payments to their landlords and roommates.

3. What challenges are they running into when sending recurrent digital payments?

Millenials liked the ease and simplicity of Venmo, but they noted that there was no special consideration for recurring payments; all payments were treated the same way.

Based on interviews, I created the personas below. I included the landlord’s perspective to make sure that we had a well-rounded product that would be easy to use for both, the sender and the recipient.

Defining the user flow

Looking at Venmo’s current functionality and flow helped me devise a seamless and efficient way to integrate a way to set recurring payments.

I also made note of when email notifications would be sent to indicate when a payment has been scheduled and when a payment has been sent. This will help us provide peace of mind to both our users and recipients.

Sketches and wireframes

An important part of the project was figuring out what payment fields to include to make sure users could set up and send their payments correctly.

Through research, interviews and competitor analysis, the following fields were added to the low fidelity wireframes.

Based on research and competitive analysis, the following design decisions were made:

Then came the development of the wireframes into high fidelity, keeping in line with Venmo’s current visual design.

Prototyping

Next came the development of the prototype, which would help us test the new design with users to gain feedback.

User testing

I then tested the flow for setting up a recurring payment and for viewing and canceling that same recurring payment. We tested this to make sure that the flows were functional, enjoyable and easy for users to complete.

My hypotheses were:

1. If we provide a feature that lets millenials set recurring payments in the app, millenials will have a more enjoyable and easier experience sending recurring payments (because they no longer will have to to worry about missing payments or needing to keep track of payment dates).

Objectives

Confirm that the new flow for setting up recurring payments helped users:

1. Sending payment to their peers (goal)

2. Set a recurring payment (solution to their problem)

Tasks

“You need to pay your landlord Emily Anderson for rent every month, on the 2nd of each month, starting November 1.

How would you set that recurring payment?” 

“This would have been so helpful when I was paying rent to my landlord.”

“How does Venmo not have this already? I see people paying each other for the same thing all the time.” 

Making changes based on feedback

Based on user feedback, I made some of the changes below (shown next to red dots in some images). If more time allowed for it, further rounds of user testing would be completed.

Reflection

I really enjoyed being able to build a feature for Venmo and learning how to integrate seamlessly. Through my research, I recognized that millennials are stepping away from the more traditional banking space (even with its additional layers of security) and opting instead for fast, reliable and simple products that get the job done.

To keep in line with this, I strived to create a feature that was simple, seamless and intuitive. It was really rewarding to hear great comments and feedback from participants that wished this feature existed.