Designing Next-Generation Payment Experiences
With upcoming ecosystem changes in the EU, driven by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), mobile platforms are expected to open up access to key hardware components such as NFC. This shift creates a significant opportunity for financial institutions to develop and deploy their own contactless payment experiences directly on smartphones, reducing reliance on platform-controlled wallets, thus reducing commission costs.
Problem
Due to the DMA opening up Apple’s NFC funtionality, banks are now allowed to build contactless wallets on iPhone, but nobody knew whether customers actually wanted one. Building such a product would require a major investment, so financial institutions needed evidence before recommending a product strategy.
This wasn't a typical UX project. The challenge here was discovering whether a better business opportunity actually existed.
Understanding the landscape
Before designing the experience, we needed to understand what had changed, what was possible, and where the real opportunity might be.
Ecosystem
Mapping the changing payment landscape as well as incentives and possible upgrade areas
Technology
Reviewed established and emerging wallet experiences to understand the current baseline users would already be familiar with.
Existing experience
Mapped the capabilities and limitations the platform has to offer. At the time of the project, there wasn’t much documentation for implementation, so we needed to dive deep into Apple’s Developer forums
Qualitative & Quantitative Research
To understand whether users would actually switch from Apple Pay to a bank-owned wallet, we combined quantitative research to identify broader patterns with qualitative research to understand the behaviours and motivations behind them.
Survey
Hungarian consumers, segmented by digital affinity and Apple Pay usage.
Usability testing
Tested a banking app prototype through realistic contactless payment scenarios.
Co-creation workshops
Explored expectations, perceived value, barriers, and motivations for switching.
Research Prototype
We put together a generalised prototype, specifically for user testing, to give participants a realistic experience to interact with, with the aim to see how they understand and navigate an alternative to their existing wallet or how intuitive and useful they’d find a digital wallet at all.
Participants completed structured tasks around realistic payment scenarios, after onboarding setting Bank Pay as their default wallet and using it to purchase a cinema ticket at a payment terminal.
Co-creation Workshop
Usability testing showed us where the experience created friction. The next step was to see what users would actually want from an alternative payment experience. Right after usability testing, we used co-creation with the participants to explore expectations, motivations and perceptions of value.
Explore
Participants reflected on the prototype and described their immediate reactions, expectations and concerns.
Prioritise
We then asked participants to prioritise different types of value, separating essential expectations from benefits that could genuinely add value.
Existing experience
Finally, participants explored ideal and frustrating versions of the experience, imagining what a truly useful wallet could look like and what would make them reject it.
Insights
The current is the baseline
Research showed that users were already highly satisfied with Apple Pay. Rather than searching for a replacement, most participants expected any alternative to first match Apple's experience before offering additional value. The strongest switching lever was tangible value, particularly financial rewards.
Rewards created more motivation than additional features.
Core functionality alone would not be enough to make the proposition compelling. The experience needed to provide additional value that users could immediately understand and appreciate, giving the product a stronger reason to exist beyond simply replicating an existing solution.
Build confidence early
Early interactions have a disproportionate impact on how users perceive a new product. Clear communication, simple interactions and a reassuring onboarding experience can reduce uncertainty and help users feel confident as they explore something unfamiliar.
Strategic Playbook
The research was consolidated into a strategic playbook designed to help the client’s team move from research findings to concrete product decisions.
The playbook was structured to give detailed insight on target segments, specific features and their priority as well as short-term and long-term strategy recommendation with detailed use cases
User segmentation
We defined distinct user profiles based on digital affinity and existing payment behaviours. To see where different audiences might have different needs, motivations and levels of support, leading to better targeted product and communication decisions.
Experience Principles
We translated the research into practical guidelines across key parts of the experience, including entry points, onboarding and payment initiation. We established reusable principles that could be applied beyond the prototype and across future iterations of the product.
Incentive Strategy
We explored different ways the proposition could create additional value, from financial rewards to functional features and loyalty mechanisms and structured them as potential levers for adoption and engagement.
Prioritization Framework
An impact framework was developed that considered user value alongside implementation effort to distinguish near-term opportunities from more complex, longer-term possibilities.
White label screens
Alongside the strategic direction, I produced a set of white-label sample screens and a supporting guide to research-backed best practices and common friction points, so the client's team had a concrete starting point for implementation. To respect client confidentiality, the details of the pages are blurred.
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If any of the stories behind my projects resonate with you or something you're building, then let's connect!
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