E-Wallet Platform Redesign

This project focused on redesigning a legacy e-wallet platform that had accumulated years of usability, onboarding, and security issues.

The goal was not simply to refresh the interface, but to rethink the entire customer experience: from onboarding and authentication to payments, wallet management, and future financial services.

The redesign covered both mobile and web platforms and was supported by competitive analysis, UX discovery, product strategy, and concept development. The vision was to transform an outdated payment service into a modern financial ecosystem capable of competing with the leading e-wallet providers in the Armenian market.

My role

• Product discovery
• Competitive analysis
• UX strategy
• User flows and information architecture
• Concept and UI design
• Design system
• Stakeholder workshops

Time

4 months

The existing platform suffered from years of accumulated product debt. Critical user journeys contained unnecessary friction, onboarding completion rates were low, authentication flows were outdated, and several security mechanisms did not meet modern user expectations.

At the same time, the platform was competing against significantly more mature digital-wallet products that already offered streamlined onboarding, loyalty programs, card issuing capabilities, and modern payment experiences.

The challenge was larger than a visual redesign. We needed to identify the most critical user and business bottlenecks and create a foundation for future growth without disrupting the existing ecosystem.

Insight #1

Users came to the platform to complete a task, not to learn how the system worked.

Insight #2

Onboarding contained multiple points of friction. Identity verification, card linking, and wallet funding forced users to leave their primary goal and complete additional setup steps.

Insight #3

Competitors were no longer competing only on payments. They were building ecosystems that included loyalty programs, financial products, and extended wallet functionality.

If we redesign the platform around customer goals rather than internal system requirements, users will be able to complete key financial tasks faster and with less friction.

Instead of asking customers to understand how the wallet works, the product should guide them through the necessary steps while keeping them focused on the outcome they came to achieve.

We approached the redesign on three levels.

Experience modernization

Redesigned core user journeys for payments, transfers, wallet management, onboarding, and account recovery.

Security and trust

Introduced a modern authentication approach with improved recovery flows, biometric support, and clearer security interactions.

Future platform foundation

Designed the experience with future services in mind, including loyalty programs, card issuance, crypto services, and international transfers.

Hypothesis

New users typically opened the application with a specific intention: pay a bill, transfer money, or complete another financial transaction. However, payments could only be made from the platform wallet.

To make the first payment, users first needed to link a bank card, fund their wallet balance, return to the payment flow, and complete the original transaction. This dependency chain created a significant risk of abandonment.

Design challenge

How might we help users complete their intended payment without forcing them through a disconnected setup process?

Solution

Instead of introducing a separate onboarding sequence, we embedded wallet activation directly into the payment journey. When users attempted to pay with an empty wallet, the payment-source component guided them through card linking, wallet funding, returning to the payment flow, and completing the transaction.

Why it was interesting

The flow had to handle cancelled card linking, partial wallet funding, existing linked cards, insufficient balances, and users leaving and returning later. Several dependent financial operations had to feel like one uninterrupted journey.

Transaction history is one of the most frequently used areas of any financial product. As activity grows, it may include utility payments, mobile top-ups, wallet transfers, incoming payments, card operations, and transfers to people or organizations.

Problem

A traditional keyword search was not sufficient. Users often remembered only fragments of a transaction: a category, an approximate date, or whether money was received or spent.

Solution

We designed a multidimensional search experience combining free-text search with date range, transaction direction, and category filters. Users could search by transaction, recipient, sender, or organization name and progressively narrow the results.

Why it was interesting

The challenge was understanding how people recall financial activity. Designing around partial memory transformed search from a simple text lookup into a flexible transaction exploration tool.

Context

The platform already had an extensive payment ecosystem connected to existing backend infrastructure.

Problem

As the number of services grew, categories became overloaded, similar services appeared in different sections, and recurring payments required the same navigation path again and again. The challenge was to make a complex ecosystem feel simple without rebuilding the backend.

Fast access to popular services

The most frequently used payment categories became accessible directly from the main payment entry points.

Favorites

Users could save frequently used destinations to a dedicated Favorites section and turn recurring payments into a one-tap experience.

Why it was interesting

Meaningful UX improvements do not always require rebuilding the underlying systems. Carefully designed navigation, information architecture, and interaction patterns can significantly reduce perceived complexity while respecting technical constraints.