HOLAPAY MOBILE APP
[PROJECT DETAILS] :
I. Overall (To think).
1. About HolaPay
HolaPay is a modern, global digital e-wallet designed to streamline how people hold, swap, and move money across borders. By analyzing their platform, we can break HolaPay's core value proposition into three key pillars:
- P2P Focus & Seamless Exchange: Allowing users to swap, buy, sell, and transfer money directly with one another using live exchange rates and zero hidden fees.
- Multi-Currency Travel Card: Giving travelers and global citizens an easy way to spend in local currencies.
- B2B Infrastructure (APIs & White-Label Wallets): Offering payment APIs and customizable wallet architectures for businesses to build their own systems.
2. Target Audience (Gen Z & Millennials) and Behaviors:
- Demand speed and immediately abandon slow, complex registration flows.
- Prefer transferring via QR codes, contacts, or handles over traditional bank accounts.
- Correlate sleek, modern UI design with security and trust.
3. Business goal & User Needs:
Business Goals:
- Minimize Time-to-Value (TTV): Guide new users to complete their first transfer in under 2 minutes to prevent early churn.
- Drive Organic Growth: Leverage peer-to-peer payment requests to acquire new users naturally.
- Maximize Funnel Conversion: Simplify the mandatory registration and KYC steps to reduce user drop-offs.
User Needs:
- Zero-Friction Transfers: Send money instantly via QR codes, phone contacts, or custom handles instead of long bank numbers.
- Trust and Security: Avoid mistakes with real-time recipient identity matching and crystal-clear fee breakdowns before confirming.
- Multi-Currency Clarity: View various currency balances at a glance and swap them instantly with live, upfront exchange rates.
II. Strategic Alignment base on Business Goals vs User Needs (To think)
To effectively solve the design challenge, we focused 100% of our resources on the two critical touchpoints of the First-Time User Experience (FTUE):
1. Welcome & Onboarding Flow (Solving Funnel Drop-offs & Cognitive Load)
Business Goal Resolved: Maximize Funnel Conversion (KYC)
By deferring heavy identity verification until after the initial setup, we remove the primary drop-off trigger and secure higher completion rates.
User Need Resolved: Zero-Friction Registration (Low Cognitive Load)
By deferring heavy identity verification until after the initial setup, we remove the primary drop-off trigger and secure higher completion rates.
2. Main Home Screen (Solving Transaction Speed, Trust, & Visibility)
Business Goal Resolved: Minimize Time-to-Value (TTV) & Drive Virality
Placing P2P actions front and center ensures first-time users can send money in under 2 minutes.
User Need Resolved: Zero-Friction Transfers, Reassurance, & Multi-Currency Clarity
- The "Quick Send" contact carousel bypasses manual account typing.
- Real-time recipient identity matching solves transfer anxiety before confirmation.
- A centralized multi-currency card layout provides instant financial status at a single glance.
III. Design Audit & Project Constraints (To think)
Methodology: Heuristic Evaluation
1. The Onboarding Constraint (Friction in Current App)
The Problem:
The existing application's registration system is highly unstable. After multiple registration attempts, I were unable to successfully sign up or access the onboarding screens.
The Solution:
Due to system constraints, I redesigned the onboarding flow from scratch using fintech UX best practices.
2. Current Main Home Screen
Heuristic Principle
Identified Issue
Severity
UX Recommendation
Visibility of system status
Date headers don't match the transaction timestamp, making the timeline confusing and unreliable.
Medium
Unify date-time formatting
Match between system and the real world
Color coding for transaction types doesn't match real-world expectation: "Sell" (negative action) is red, but "Direct Transfer Sent" (also negative) is purple. Users expect direction (in/out) to map consistently to color, not transaction label.
High
Change the visual of label and the color for the value
Consistency and standards
"Buy" button is visually dominant over "Transfer", contradicting the P2P transfer focus.
Medium
Re-establish CTA visual hierarchy
Recognition rather than recall
The purple/blue/green/red icon colors for transaction types lack annotations and consistent logic - users must memorize the meaning of each color instead of recognizing them from the interface.
High
Rework the colors and make it more minimalist for easier recognition.
Aesthetic & Minimalist Design
Promo banner placed inside the ledger breaks the vertical scanning pattern.
Medium
Move promotional banners to dedicated promotional sections.
Top-right utility icons are too close, increasing accidental tap risks.
Medium
Increase spacing and touch target sizes for top-bar icons to prevent mis-taps.
Five-plus accent colors in play (purple, blue, green, red, teal/brand green) with no unifying system reads as noisy rather than intentional.
High
Rework the colors and make it more minimalist for easier recognition.
Additional UX problems (beyond the heuristic list)
Navigation & wayfinding
- Bottom navigation only shows two icons, making it unclear how to access the rest of the app. No context, so users don't know where they are in the app.
- The same smiley icon is used for both the profile and bottom navigation, making their functions unclear.
Density & scanability
- Transaction details are too crowded and misaligned, making them hard to scan and compare quickly.
IV. Competitive Reserach (To think)
Methodology: Voice of the Customer (VoC), Competitive Research, Heuristic Evaluation, UX Regressions
To ensure a data-driven and objective revamp, we employed Voice of the Customer (VoC) Mining to analyze qualitative user feedback (verbatims) from App Store, Google Play, Reddit, and Trustpilot. This was paired with Competitive Benchmarking and a Heuristic Evaluation of major competitors (Wise, Revolut, Cash App) to identify visual hierarchy issues, cognitive load bottlenecks, and recent UX Regressions in their latest home screen updates.
1. Voice of the Customer (VoC)
Wise
3 Things Users Actually Love (Exact Words)
Convenience for global travelers:
"I'm a user of Wise since the times it was still called Transferwise 😄 ... a very convenient way to accept or send money to different countries, perfect for digital nomads." – App Store PL Review by Eter_r6.
Transparency and competitive exchange rates:
"I like the fact that you can see the exchange prices very easily, which by the way are very competitive." – Trustpilot Review.
Instant transaction speed:
"Transferring £ to € to my Spanish bank account was instant." – Trustpilot Review by Cazza.
3 Things Users Complain About the Most (Exact Words)
The new grouped currency interface is terrible:
"The new UI update is trash. They changed the UI in the latest update (atleast for ios) and now all your currencies are grouped into one card. It looks so ugly." – Reddit r/transferwiser Discussion.
The Home screen is cluttered with secondary info and unbalanced fonts:
"The crucial information - balance information for individual accounts - is the smallest on the page. The font for referral and profile are both larger. So much info appears on the main page cluttering it up." – Reddit r/transferwiser Discussion.
Difficulties when sending money to a new recipient:
"My only small niggle is, when paying somebody new this can be challenging..." – Trustpilot Review.
Revolut
3 Things Users Actually Love (Exact Words)
Intuitive for daily use:
"It's intuitive, fast, and covers everything I need day to day." – Trustpilot Review by Dirk Estievenart.
Highly customizable dashboard layouts:
"I can be paid my salary into revolut and put money away into bills or pockets for saving its so mandy [handy]." – Trustpilot Review by CLAIRE O MEARA.
Seamless currency account creation and swap flow:
"Revolut is great to use. It's very easy to open new currency accounts and convert funds, with clear and transparent fees. The app is user-friendly, fast, and straightforward." – Trustpilot Review by Elle.
3 Things Users Complain About the Most (Exact Words)
Too many intrusive internal ads and notifications:
"If you want your bank to continually nag you about random reward points or credit cards your don't want, then this is the right app for you." - Google Play Store Review.
Cluttered Home screen burying core transfer features:
"Hate the new app! So cluttered with things (ads) I don't use, and everything requires so many steps! ... Their touted 'currency conversion' is no longer easily accessible..." – Reddit r/Revolut Discussion.
Exposing sensitive information directly on the Home screen:
"I find it a bit unecessary, it looked more modern without the IBAN, thats an information rarely needed, so its not something that should permanently be shown, adding to cluttery." – Reddit r/Revolut Discussion.
Cash App
Extreme simplicity and speed:
Convenience for global travelers:
"Cash App is super simple!! Sending money is quick and the history is clear." - App Store Review.
Clear transaction records:
"I love the simplicity of using Cash App. It's quick and you have a record of sending it." - App Store Review.
Convenient secondary features (Savings/Borrowing/Stocks):
"Savings is a good interest rate. Buying crypto and stocks is easy. Borrowing is a good rate... all of this comes in handy if your in a pinch." - App Store Review by Zatezig.
3 Things Users Complain About the Most (Exact Words)
Card lock management feature was moved off the home navigation:
"However the new update they just did where you now have to take more steps to lock and unlock your card is enough to make a person mad." – App Store Cash App Card Lock Review
The bare home screen hides crucial settings:
"My only headache is card shipping: no PO Box. In my small town mail isn't delivered..." (Users highlight that keeping the home screen so clean forces essential settings to be buried behind the tiny profile icon).
No option to explain declining a payment from the home activity list:
"Cashapp is a really useful app to send money but when it comes to declining money, Cashapp should have a feature where you write a short caption to the person you're declining..." – App Store Cash App Feedback Review
Key Takeaways
- Wise: Force-grouping all foreign currencies into a single card on the Home screen hides detailed balances and causes user frustration. HolaPay must display multi-currency options in a clean, distinguishable layout.
- Revolut: Intrusive internal promotions distract users from core transfer tasks. Automatically exposing the user's personal IBAN directly on the Home screen compromises privacy in public spaces.
- Cash App: While the "2-tap" P2P transfer loop is highly efficient, burying critical security features (like the quick card lock toggle) deep under sub-menus post-update damages user trust.
V. Design Solutions (To think)
We map Usability Heuristics & Key takeaway from competitive research directly to our design solutions to build a bulletproof product strategy:
1. Home Screen
Swipeable Multi-Currency Cards
Use swipeable cards for each currency wallet, with an eye toggle to quickly hide balances.
Prominent Action Buttons below Wallet:
Simplify core actions to Send, Request, and Swap for a clearer and more intuitive experience. Swap will be include “Buy” & “Sell”. Place large, prominent Send, Request, and Swap buttons below the wallet cards for faster access.
1-Tap "Quick Send" Contact Carousel:
Show frequent contacts on the home screen for one-tap access to the payment flow.
Dismissible Ads & Passive Privacy:
Keep promotions swipeable and easy to dismiss, giving more space to balances and core actions.
2. Onboarding Design
Reduces cognitive load and increases onboarding completion.
Break onboarding into simple, step-by-step actions (Phone → OTP → Face ID).
Builds trust and reduces privacy concerns.
Add reassuring security messages next to sensitive inputs.
Faster Time-to-Value
Delay KYC until the user's first transaction so they can access the app immediately.
VI. Define the scheme of UI (To Make)
1. Some keywords to create a mood board
2. Style
- Modern - minimalisms
3. Colors
4. Font Family
VII. Sketch - Skeleton (To Make)
VIII. UI - Surface (To Make)
1. Onboarding Flow
2. Home Screen
