Overview.

Users love Venmo because it’s fast and easy to use. In just a few taps you can send your mom, brother, best friend and dog sitter a couple bucks. But in reality, one of the key use cases in Venmo, transferring your money out, wasn’t fast or easy. Up until a few months ago the fastest a Venmo users could transfer their money into a bank account took 1-3 business days to process due to a system called ACH. It’s a super outdated and old framework for moving money that the majority of the US still uses due to legacy issues. For users who are in a cash crunch, this is a huge problem that could cause them to look to other competitors such as Square Cash, Zelle, and Apple Pay for solutions, who offer instant access to thei cash.

We wanted to let users have access to their Venmo balance instantly, and be able turn that into cash. This was also an opportunity for Venmo to charge users and start making money with this feature.

My role.

I was the lead designer on this project, working with a team of engineers and product managers. I worked super closely with our product manager on this feature - exploring designs, content, and user testing throughout the entire process. We worked on the designs and iterations for months refining usability based on user feedback, legal feedback, and input from the greater Venmo team before letting it go into the wild!

Simplicity

For the designs I wanted to give the screen more breathing room and white space to focus on what's really important for a user at each step. This meant rearranging the hierarchy in matter of importance - the amount, destination, and a clear call to action. The simple step by step UI limits the decisions a user has to make. The design pre-fills the transfer amount for a user based on how much money you have in your account, we remember the last destination you transferred to so that the user doesn't have to make a selection, and only show one selection and not a blown out list so there is no confusion.

Clarity

Focus on transparency and speak to our users in a way that’s easy to understand and clear. A good example of this is in the action sheet, breaking down fees clearly and labelling sections like “what you’ll get.” We currently had a large drop off at the “Confirm Transfer” screen. The transition was too subtle changing from blue to green. The action sheet clarifies that an action needs to be taken in order to confirm the transfer.

Speed

Users love Venmo because it's "simple and fast." We didn’t want to lose this feeling in the new process, so the design uses motion and interstitial steps such as the action sheet to convey a fast and lightweight transfer process.