E-Wallet Platform Redesign
Reimagining a legacy payment platform for the next generation of digital financial services
Overview
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 The vision was to transform an outdated payment service into a modern financial ecosystem capable of competing with the leading e-wallet providers in the Armenian market.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
Time
4 months
The Problem
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Critical user journeys contained unnecessary friction, onboarding completion rates were low, authentication flows were outdated, and several security mechanisms did not meet modern user expectations.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.
Research highlights
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. Processes such as identity verification, card linking, and wallet funding required 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.
Core Hypothesis
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.
Solution
We approached the redesign on three levels:
Experience Modernization
Redesigned core user journeys for payments, transfers, wallet management, onboarding, and account recovery.
Security & 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.
Challenges
1
Completing a Payment Before Wallet Setup
Hypothesis
One of the most interesting product challenges emerged during the first-payment experience.
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;
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 became an intelligent entry point that guided them through:
Card linking
Wallet funding
Returning to the payment flow
Completing the transaction
The experience remained centered around the user’s goal rather than around platform setup requirements.
Why It Was Interesting
The flow required handling multiple edge cases:
card linking cancelled;
wallet funded partially;
linked card already exists;
payment amount exceeds funded balance;
user leaves the process and returns later.
Designing a seamless experience required coordinating several dependent financial operations while maintaining a single uninterrupted user journey.
2
Finding a Transaction in a Growing Financial History
Transaction history is one of the most frequently used areas of any financial product.
As users continue using the platform, their transaction history grows rapidly and may include:
utility payments;
mobile top-ups;
wallet transfers;
incoming payments;
card operations;
transfers to other users;
payments to organizations.
During discovery, we identified a common problem: users often remembered only fragments of a transaction.
Problem
A traditional keyword search was not sufficient.
Searching by transaction name alone created several limitations:
users often did not remember the exact wording;
similar transactions produced large result sets;
some payments were easier to remember by category than by recipient;
users frequently remembered when a transaction happened rather than who it was sent to.
As transaction volume increased, finding a specific operation became increasingly difficult.
Solution
We designed a multi-dimensional search and filtering experience that combined free-text search with contextual filters.
Users could search by:
transaction name;
recipient name;
sender name;
organization name.
In addition, search results could be refined using several filters:
Date Range. Users could narrow results to a specific period when the transaction was likely performed. This allowed them to quickly reduce hundreds of records to a manageable subset.
Transaction Direction. Chip-based filters allowed users to switch between incoming and outgoing transactions. This reflected how people naturally think about financial activity: “money received” versus “money spent.”
Transaction Categories. Users could further refine results using transaction categories (transfers, utility payments etc) Categories helped users navigate based on intent rather than remembering exact transaction details.
Why It Was Interesting
The challenge was not building a search field. The challenge was understanding how users recall financial activity. Instead of assuming users remember exact transaction names, we designed the experience around partial memory and multiple paths to discovery. This transformed search from a simple text lookup into a flexible transaction exploration tool.
3
Building a Modern Payment Experience on Top of Legacy Infrastructure
Context
One of the biggest constraints of the project was that the platform already had an extensive payment ecosystem connected to the existing backend infrastructure.
Problem
Many competing payment platforms exposed the complexity of the underlying system directly to users.
As the number of available services grew, navigation became increasingly difficult:
users struggled to locate the correct provider;
categories became overloaded;
similar services appeared in different sections;
frequently used payments required repeating the same navigation path over and over again.
The challenge was not creating new payment functionality. The challenge was making an already complex ecosystem feel simple.
Fast Access to Popular Services
The most frequently used payment categories became immediately accessible from the main payment entry points. Users could reach common services within a few taps instead of navigating through multiple layers of menus.
Favorites
Users could save frequently used payment destinations to a dedicated Favorites section. This reduced repeated navigation and transformed recurring payments into a one-tap experience.
Why It Was Interesting
This challenge was less about designing individual screens and more about balancing business constraints with customer experience. The backend structure had to remain largely unchanged, yet the user experience needed to feel modern, lightweight, and intuitive.
The solution demonstrated that meaningful UX improvements do not always require rebuilding underlying systems. In many cases, carefully designed navigation, information architecture, and interaction patterns can significantly reduce perceived complexity while working within existing technical constraints.
