Outcome
After launch, monthly exchange transactions rose 13%, and withdrawals stayed stable even though withdraw moved under Transfer. In testing, the chosen balance concept was preferred by 63% of participants and scored highest on ease of use.
The challenge
The first thing customers saw wasn’t the reason they opened the app. The Skrill home screen had grown to carry products, promotions, currencies and engagement, and it had become crowded. A promotion banner took the most prominent space. A long list of balances, crypto included, pushed adding, sending and exchanging money down the screen. Cards, rewards and merchant offers competed for attention without clear entry points.
It cost the business too. Banner blindness meant customers missed the updates we put in prime space, new features went unnoticed, and internally it was hard to agree what deserved a promo card. The job wasn’t to remove engagement. It was to put customers’ money tasks first and give everything else a clear place.
My role
I led the redesign: framing the problem, concepts, testing with customers and the final design. Several rounds of research tested usability, understandability and the discoverability of the new positions of transaction actions and entry points before we chose a direction. I then wrote the Phase 1 scope screen by screen, so engineering had one clear definition of what was changing.
Understanding the problem
Our target persona was Oliver, new to sports betting and crypto. People like him start with the payment methods they use every day. A wallet enters their life when a merchant doesn’t accept their card, and it stays because it is faster. Later, many use it as a separate pot of money they keep apart from their main bank account. For him the home screen has to explain itself on the first visit, then get out of the way.
An audit of the existing app found three problems to solve:
- Scattered money actions Exchange wasn’t paired with the other balance functions, and Request money was buried inside Send.
- Too many competing priorities Promotions, every balance and engagement content fought money tasks for the top of the screen. With a crypto balance selected, deposits and withdrawals were blocked with no explanation.
- Features without a home Card was stuck at the top, Rewards and Sports Corner could only be reached from the dashboard, and the navigation had no room for anything new.
Structure before screens
We watched customers do the tasks we wanted to benchmark: deposit, exchange and send to another person. We studied navigation in payment apps and in everyday apps outside finance, then mapped five information-architecture options with their trade-offs. The direction we took forward put Add, Transfer and Exchange directly under the balance, with every way of sending and withdrawing grouped under Transfer.
Testing our assumptions with customers
What looked clear to us wasn’t always clear to the people using it. Each round of testing asked three questions. Findability: can people quickly locate what they need? Understandability: do labels, icons and groupings match what they expect? Usability: can they complete common tasks without confusion?
Three ways to show the balance
We tested three balance concepts. Dropdown was familiar and compact, but money wasn’t visible in one place and it was easy to act on the wrong balance. Carousel kept other currencies in view with the actions attached to each balance, at the cost of a swipe. Cards showed every balance, but pushed the main actions one tap away and took over the screen.
| Metric | Dropdown | Carousel | Cards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balance visibility | 22 | 32 | 30 |
| Add new balance, discoverability | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| Remove balance, discoverability | 15 | 15 | 14 |
| Error prevention (deposit, withdraw, send) | 16 | 30 | 31 |
| Ease of use | 4.00 | 4.56 | 4.25 |
| Preferred by participants | 12% | 63% | 25% |
What testing changed
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01
Icons alone weren’t enough
Initial direction. The first design used icon-only shortcuts for balance actions, which kept the interface compact.
What we learned. People needed labels to use the actions with confidence. An icon that seemed obvious to the design team wasn’t obvious to everyone else.
What changed. Every balance action got a label: Add, Transfer and Exchange.
Familiar-looking icons don’t carry meaning on their own. Clarity beats minimalism.
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02
Sending and withdrawing were one task to customers
Initial direction. Money out was split between sending to other people and sending to yourself.
What we learned. The split made people unsure where withdraw lived and which entry point to choose.
What changed. Send became Transfer, with withdraw and every send option inside it, ordered from most to least used.
Information architecture should follow how customers think about a task, not how the business groups its features.
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03
The balance area had to behave the same in every state
Initial direction. The actions in the balance widget changed with the account or balance state.
What we learned. Controls that appeared and disappeared made familiar actions harder to find, especially when something was limited.
What changed. The same core actions always show. When one is restricted, the screen says why and points to the next step.
In money products, explaining a limit beats hiding the button.
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04
More shortcuts didn’t mean easier navigation
Initial direction. Some money actions sat both next to the balance and in the bottom navigation.
What we learned. The repetition made people unsure how the app was meant to be navigated.
What changed. The balance area and the bottom navigation got separate jobs, with no duplicated entry points.
Discoverability isn’t putting an action everywhere. It’s putting it where people expect it.
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05
People had to see a second balance to know it existed
Initial direction. Other currencies sat in a long list, or out of view.
What we learned. Multicurrency was found far more often when the design hinted at a second balance. Opening a new balance through Exchange felt natural.
What changed. A second balance peeks into view, empty balances are easy to remove, and Exchange sits next to the balance.
If customers can’t see a feature, it doesn’t exist for them.
How it should feel
We tested the visual language too, because in a wallet trust is partly a look. A large balance read as more financial and more trustworthy. Square-cornered, coloured action buttons felt fast and to the point. A colour mark on the current tab made navigation feel simple and clear. Strong gradients made the product feel playful, but could undermine the sense of safety, so they had to be used with care.
The final experience
-
01
Money actions first
The main balance leads the screen, with Add, Transfer and Exchange directly beneath it. The promotion banner left the first screen.
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02
One balance in focus
The main balance is shown large, currency first, with other currencies one swipe away instead of a long list.
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03
Recent activity on home
The latest transactions sit on the home screen, so people can check a payment without going anywhere else.
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04
A clear place for engagement
Loyalty points and Sports Corner stayed on home, under the money tasks. Sports and Rewards got their own tabs, and a notification centre took over messages that used to need promo banners.
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05
Designed for every account state
Actions keep their place even when a service is limited. The screen explains the restriction and the next step instead of changing the layout.
From testing to launch
The changes touched some of the most used entry points in the wallet, and even a small navigation change can shift how people reach financial services. Phase 1 covered the home, Add money, Transfer, Card, Crypto and Rewards, each with its own spec, and after launch we checked transaction behaviour against the period before.
Result
- +13%Monthly exchange transactions after Exchange moved next to the balance
- StableWithdrawals after withdraw moved under Transfer
- 63%Of test participants preferred the chosen balance concept
- 4.56Ease-of-use score, the highest of the three concepts
A before-and-after comparison can’t isolate the redesign as the only cause of the exchange increase, but it was the signal we wanted: more use of the action we made visible, with no loss in the one we moved.
Reflection
Making an interface simpler isn’t about removing features. It’s about deciding what deserves attention. Some of the most useful insights came from things that looked straightforward: an icon without a label, two actions that sounded different internally, a shortcut repeated in two places. Small details, but each changed how confidently someone could use the product.
It also reminded me that a design decision has to hold up beyond the test. Moving a financial action can make a screen look cleaner, but what it does to real transactions matters just as much. Next time I’d also measure time on task before and after, so the hypothesis about speed gets its own number.