PayPal Feature Design
Adding advanced trading to PayPal's crypto feature
Project Background
PayPal is one of the largest online payment processors in the world. PayPal history boasts a successful timeline of growth and innovation, becoming the desired way to pay for many.
PayPal’s mission is to democratize financial services to ensure that everyone, regardless of background or economic standing, has access to affordable, convenient, and secure products and services to take control of their financial lives.
As of 2020, PayPal introduced the buying/selling of crypto on their platform. Starting from August 2022, PayPal account holders in the US can transfer, send, and receive cryptocurrency with PayPal.
Project Type
App Feature Design
Duration
4 Weeks
Role
Sole Designer, User Research, UX Design, Visual Design, Prototyping
I assumed that with the addition of crypto on PayPal's platform, there have been users who yearn for more options and control over their assets.
Understanding the Problem Space Around
PayPal's Crypto Feature
My Approach
In order to identify the specific pain points that users experience with PayPal’s crypto feature, I started the project with multiple angles of research.
The research helped define the problem and outlined the steps I did secondary research on PayPal’s forums to see if there were any discussions around the crypto features.
From PayPal’s forum, I found that there were users that wanted more options when trading crypto. Which tells me that I’m on the right track, but to get better research results, I looked to user research and competitor analysis.
The research helped define the problem and outlined the steps I did secondary research on PayPal’s forums to see if there were any discussions around the crypto features.
From PayPal’s forum, I found that there were users that wanted more options when trading crypto. Which tells me that I’m on the right track, but to get better research results, I looked to user research and competitor analysis.
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Empathize Through Research
Competitor Analysis
It was important for me to analyze PayPal’s competitors in the market to better understand how the space looks like in the fintech and crypto world.
Key Takeaways:
- Customers trust a brand that has global reach and are more willing to use that application
- With transaction fees becoming more prevalent, it creates more distance between individuals & small businesses towards those platforms.
- As the world becomes more tech savvy, the need and preference for digital financial services around the world increases.
- While fintech is a fast and growing market, it leads to a sharp increase in competition and regulations across the industry.
User Interviews
The interviews focused on understanding users’ sentiments about Crypto and PayPal’s platform.
I asked questions like:
- Tell me about your experience with trading cryptocurrency
- What’s the hardest part about trading with crypto
- Do you prefer using other payment service apps over PayPal
I think at this point, these crypto sites really need to have option trading. Being able to trade and manage crypto to a finer degree is really the point of cryptocurrency.
It's really difficult to trade crypto for me because of the state I live in has restrictions on crypto. It limits the platform I can trade from, and exchanges made within the crypto community.
"Robinhood and Coinbase's UI looks really nice. It makes me kind of motivated to use it. They feel more intuitive and just easier to use.
I wasn't aware of the crypto feature. I mainly use PayPal to pay for things and transfer money to friends and vice-versa.
After conducting the user interviews, my assumptions about users wanting more options and control over their assets was proven true.
Interview Findings
From the interviews, I was able to gain insights on what pain points users have with PayPal and their crypto feature.
- Users preferred either a simplistic crypto platform or a platform with more functionality
- With crypto still being a relatively young field, majority of the users are likewise beginner/intermediate with their understanding of cryptocurrency
- Users know and use PayPal for making transactions and didn’t know PayPal had a crypto feature
Problem Statement
How might we introduce advanced crypto trading features so that users won’t feel overwhelmed?
Synthesize my Research Findings
Crypto Newbie
Meet Christine, the crypto newbie who just heard about the hype around crypto and wants to dive into the scene.
Christine has her own set of challenges and goals which helped me brainstorm and prioritize features in the next step. Some of her frustrations include being overwhelmed by complicated features, and the time commitments in learning something new.
Christine has her own set of challenges and goals which helped me brainstorm and prioritize features in the next step. Some of her frustrations include being overwhelmed by complicated features, and the time commitments in learning something new.
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Crypto Enthusiast
Then there’s Liam, your resident crypto expert who likes to keep himself updated on all things crypto related.
Liam's goals of wanting to securely and safely use crypto as the mainstream form of payment has helped me understand the need to bring more awareness to the crypto feature.
Liam's goals of wanting to securely and safely use crypto as the mainstream form of payment has helped me understand the need to bring more awareness to the crypto feature.
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Ideate and Prioritize Solutions
With my user personas in mind, I created an impact-effort prioritization matrix to help me determine what features to focus on.
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Looking at the prioritization of the different features, I put off the high-effort, low-impact item. I decided that the high-impact and high-effort items would have priority. While the scope of the three high-impact, high-effort items are wide, I choose crypto order types as my main focus for this project.
Create an Experience That Blends in
While the idea of adding advanced crypto features seems straightforward, the key is to integrate the features seamlessly into PayPal’s app that users know and love. In order to improve the crypto feature, we need to avoid disruption and friction.
I started by laying out how PayPal’s sitemap looks like currently. From there, I added in the new features where it would make sense for users to find and locate them.
I started by laying out how PayPal’s sitemap looks like currently. From there, I added in the new features where it would make sense for users to find and locate them.
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Following the sitemap, I created a user flow that showed the path users can take to navigate with both the current crypto platform and the advanced feature that will be added.
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Now I know where I want the features to be located, the focus shifts to how to integrate the new feature. I created preliminary sketches and low-fidelity wireframe before moving on to high-fidelity wireframes.
Where will users be able to access advanced trading?
I created a toggle, where users land on basic trading and can toggle to advanced trading. To reduce the amount of information on trading screens, I adapted one of the icons in use for send/receiving crypto in order to swap between the basic/advanced trading.
What information will users expect to see and use when using advanced trading features?
Through my secondary research, I prioritized limit, market, and stop-limit trading as the initial features to introduce in the advanced trading options.
How can we introduce the functionality of advanced trading?
To address the issues of users being overwhelmed with new functionality, I added tooltips when users land on the screen. By doing so, I wanted users to feel confident when navigating through the advanced trading flow.
Test, Iterate, and Repeat
I created two flows to test the basic and advanced flows. I had participants run through three tasks:
- Buy $20 of Ethereum using the basic trading feature
- Buy an Ethereum coin at $1104 using limit order
- Create a stop-limit order of $1100 and $1110 with a budget of $600
100%
of users completed
the usability test
the usability test
84%
of users felt the
platform was intuitive
platform was intuitive
84%
of users felt satisfied
with the platform
with the platform
92%
of users would recommend
this platform to others
this platform to others
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While users navigated through the basic trading features with ease, users who were unfamiliar with crypto and stock trading platforms struggled with understanding the terminology of the advanced trading feature. Therefore, I created a tutorial and a FAQ to help users walk through the new features.
Final Thoughts & Next Steps
Although this was a hypothetical feature design project, this project allowed me to exercise both my design thinking skills and my ability to create within an established design system.
The fact that PayPal is a widely used app in the fintech world also made the usability testing more realistic. Participants are familiar with the app, know what to expect, and are able to provide detailed feedback.
Going forward the next steps would be to test the iterations I've made and to tackle the other priorities based on an impact-effort matrix.
The fact that PayPal is a widely used app in the fintech world also made the usability testing more realistic. Participants are familiar with the app, know what to expect, and are able to provide detailed feedback.
Going forward the next steps would be to test the iterations I've made and to tackle the other priorities based on an impact-effort matrix.
