Venmo has emerged as one of the most popular apps for electronically transferring funds from one party to another. Its growth is largely driven by millennials, who even use its name as a verb, as in: "I'll Venmo you for the food." Venmo is aimed at friends and family who wish to split bills. Splitting bills has become a norm in social groups. Most people don’t carry as much cash as they used to, so a bill-splitting app is often the most convenient and easy way to divide the costs of a bill.
While Venmo provides a fast, social, and easy experience with its current features, users still have to calculate their expenses elsewhere and keep track of who owes what before requesting payment on Venmo.
I added a feature that allows users to create a group with the ability of splitting multiple expenses between friends that seamlessly fits into Venmo's current design system.
VENMO
Venmo users average five transactions per month, and the average transaction amount is $65-75 in the U.S.
More than 70 million people used Venmo in 2021, up from 52 million the previous year, and most users are located in the U.S.
61% of Venmo’s users are male, 39% are female Some 44% of adults ages 18 to 29 who have used these payment sites or apps cite splitting expenses with others as a major reason
Venmo's large user base provides them with an advantage in the P2P payment market, with many users citing the ability to split expenses as a key reason for using the platform.
SPLITTING EXPENSES
Millennials dine-out more than the non-millennials, calling out for splits can weigh on the wallet over time. Today, just to avoid the awkward moments, splitting bills equally has become a norm in social groups.
Many apps have come up in to provide solutions in this area. From Splitwise to Billr, these apps helps to split these bills to the point. All of these apps still miss out on a pain point, and that is the instant payment of bills enabled in them.
Survey asked how 1,000 Americans preferred to handle their check when dining in large groups. 41% said that they split the check depending on what each person ordered, another 41% said they would split the check evenly and the last 18% take turns covering the whole bill. As you can see, there really isn’t much consensus.
65 percent of young people use cash apps regularly to exchange money with friends.
Most people agree on the fundamentals: Get the transaction done in a timely manner. Don’t dally. Same-day repayment, whether you’re sending or requesting, is best for both parties
Young people (Under 34) spend more money dining out and use cash apps regularly to exchange money with friends. P2P payment platforms are on the rise due to convenience, speed, and efficiency.
Key Findings: Top bill-splitting apps focus on organizing expenses between multiple people, and allow an easy way to calculate how much each person owes. These apps lack the large user base that Venmo already has. Many bill-splitting apps miss out on a pain point—facilitating instant payment within their app.
There’s an opportunity to add a feature that streamlines how a user can organize and calculate multiple expenses and request payment.
Key Insights:
•Users find it time consuming to organize expenses for splitting because they have to use other methods (excel, calculator, other apps) before getting on Venmo to request payment.
“It would be cool if Venmo and Splitwise merged.”
• Users encounter difficulties when splitting bills with multiple people
• Users find it difficult to communicate multiple expenses and would want to see a breakdown of expenses
• Users often split money between large groups and normally split evenly or custom amount, depending on the situation
Needs:
• users need a streamlined way to organize expenses and request payment users need a way to easily calculate the amount of money each person needs to pay
• users need a way to communicate expenses to other users
• users need a way to manually split costs (custom or evenly split) between larger groups of people
Let's meet Alyssa.
Alyssa spends a lot of her time hanging out with her friends. She is extroverted and is often the common ground when bringing people together. Because of her proactive, organized personality, she’s the one who everyone “Venmos back”. She finds it difficult to split multiple expenses between a group and needs a way to reduce time calculating and organizing the expenses.
I’d like to explore ways to streamline how users calculate multiple expenses and request payment from a group.
I’d like to explore ways that will allow users to easily calculate the amount of money each person needs to pay because they find it difficult when splitting bills
I’d like to explore ways that effectively communicate expense breakdown
I’d like to explore ways that’ll make requesting money from a group easier
How might we streamline calculating multiple expenses and requesting money from a group?
How might we help users calculate the split amount more easily?
How might we help users easily understand and communicate each expense?
How might we optimize the payment process for groups?
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I created a user flow to help me visually represent all the paths a user can take when using the new feature. Because users are already familiar with Venmo’s payment and request flow, I wanted to ensure that the new feature follows those design patterns so that it remains intuitive to use. I chose Pay/Request as the entry point for the new feature because it’ll allow users to easily select users for their group and the end goal for users it to request payment from friends. From here, I was able to determine how many screens would be needed, what order they should appear in, and what components needed to be present. By creating task flows that center on the new features I am adding for Venmo, I was able to think through the necessary steps and examine the user experience in details.
Splitwise, a direct competitor for splitting expenses, allows users to create a group before adding expenses while Tab makes users add a person with every split. From my user insights and findings from competitive analysis, I decided to explore two options: creating a group BEFORE or AFTER adding in the expenses, in order to understand what would make the user experience more efficient. In addition, users find communicating multiple expenses difficult, so I also explored a few options for showing an expense breakdown.
In my initial wireframes, I later realized that the design patterns didn't fit Venmo's brand, and I could combine components of screens to simplify the overall user experience. Moving forwards, I made sure to incorporate existing design patterns of Venmo that have been applied elsewhere in the app to ensure that the feature integrated seamlessly into Venmo.
After designing key screens identified in my user and task flows, I jumped into creating low-fidelity sketches. I am able to capture my ideas by pen and paper quickly by sketching, and it enables me to examine my ideas before digitizing.
Option A:
• Group creation happens after selecting users, which follows Venmo's current design pattern
• Expense breakdown is shown after adding multiple expenses
Option B:
• Group creation happens after requesting payment
• Expense breakdown is shown throughout adding expenses
PROTOTYPE A
PROTOTYPE B
