Where customers decide to trust a wallet

Outcome

On the Skrill wallet home, monthly exchange transactions rose 13% with take rate held at 4.1%, and withdrawals stayed stable. On PaysafeCard registration, an assessment across four evidence sources found 29 issues, five of them critical, and became the evidence base for the next registration PRD.

Stakes

Trust in a financial product is built in ordinary moments: finding your balance, moving money, getting verified, recovering when something fails. Across Paysafe’s wallets, two of those moments needed attention for different reasons.

Wallet home Core money actions competed with promotions and navigation for the same space.
Registration Fewer than half of the people who started registration finished it, and the evidence explaining why sat with four different teams.

In both, the question was the same: what does the customer need to be sure of at this step, and what is getting in the way?

My role

I led the Skrill and Neteller wallet home redesign in 2022. In 2026 I framed and ran the PaysafeCard onboarding assessment: its structure, severity model and evidence synthesis. I set the design direction and quality standard; delivery and outcomes were shared with Product, Engineering, Research and Voice of Customer partners.

Wallet home

01
Put money actions first
The home screen had to work as a control centre. We reworked hierarchy and navigation so balance, exchange, cards and money movement came before engagement and promotional content.
02
Test options with customers before committing
We tested more than ten UI concepts with customers before choosing a direction, so the final hierarchy came from how people looked for their money, not from internal preference.
03
Protect commercial performance
A cleaner layout only counted if customers found core actions more easily and revenue held. We tracked exchange volume and margin alongside the design changes.

Result

+13%Exchange volume after the redesign
HeldMargin held while volume grew
StableWithdrawal volume after navigation changes
Easier to findCard ordering and the loyalty / Rewards tab gained clearer placement

Schematic before and after of the Skrill wallet home: promotions and engagement sit above money actions before; after, Add, Transfer and Exchange sit under the balance, with promotions below. — Money actions moved above promotions — schematic before and after.

Wallet Home Redesign & Dark Mode →

Registration

The problem

On PaysafeCard, fewer than half of the people who started registration completed it. Most of the drop-off happened in the first three steps: country selection, email and mobile verification.

User journey map of the seven PaysafeCard registration steps, from country selection to account created, showing what users think and feel at each step and the business risk it creates. Frustration and abandonment risk peak at personal details, address and mobile verification. — Journey map from the assessment deck: where confidence drops across the seven registration steps.

01
Combine existing evidence before running new research
The evidence already existed, spread across four teams: a heuristic audit, funnel data, support volumes and app-store reviews. Support alone handled hundreds of contacts a month about SMS verification during registration. We put all four sources side by side before designing anything.
02
Compare issues on one severity model
I built a single severity model across six dimensions: usability, trust and transparency, content and tone, business impact, behavioural fit and growth readiness. A copy problem and a compliance gap could then be ranked by consequence, regardless of which team had raised them.
03
Find the real cause
The biggest problems weren’t visual. At the critical steps, customers were left unsure what had happened, whether something had failed and what to do next. The fixes needed clearer states and recovery paths more than new screens.

Assessment overview slide: objective, methodology, coverage of 40+ scenarios across 7 onboarding steps and 10+ countries, and 29 issues identified, five of them critical. — Assessment overview from the deck. Some internal detail removed.

Result

<50%Registration completion baseline
29 issuesFive of them critical
HundredsMonthly support contacts on SMS verification
10 marketsPaysafeCard registration assessed across markets

The prioritised findings became the evidence base for the Phase 1 Registration Improvements PRD, where I was a named UX owner. Critical findings were tracked through the UX Quality Bar (Design Gates & UX Quality Bar →). Phase 1 was planned for Q4 2026, after my involvement ended, so the completion figure here is a baseline rather than a result.

Severity model: six assessment dimensions with example findings across critical, high, medium and low severity.
Dimension	Critical 5	High	Medium	Low
Usability	No way back after a failed step	Unclear SMS resend state
Trust & transparency	Unclear what happens to my data		Fee timing unclear
Content & tone		Error copy dead-ends		Inconsistent button labels
Business impact
Behavioural fit
Growth readiness

Critical 5

No way back after a failed step
Unclear what happens to my data

High

Unclear SMS resend state
Error copy dead-ends

Medium

Fee timing unclear

Low

Inconsistent button labels

One model to rank a copy issue against a compliance gap. Example chips are public-safe illustrations of the pattern, not the full issue list.

UX Assessment Programme →

Reflection

The two journeys taught the same lesson from opposite ends. On home, the problem was layout, and the fix could be measured within weeks. On registration, the answers already existed, split across four teams, and most of the value came from putting them side by side. Evidence that can’t be compared rarely changes a roadmap.