Pesawise mobile app

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Pesawise mobile app

Industry: Fintech

My role(s): Product designer

Collaborators: Software engineers, Project Manager, Sales team

Prototype

Figma

Overview

Pesawise is a Kenyan fintech startup focused on simplifying cross-border payments, mobile money transactions, and financial management for individuals and SMEs. I led the full redesign of their mobile app as the sole product designer, focusing on UI/UX improvements that would increase usability, drive engagement, and enhance the overall payment experience.

This case study covers the redesign process, from research to final UI implementation and the resulting business impact.

Problems the App is solving

Users were dropping off mid-transaction, the onboarding had a significant abandonment rate, and the existing interface wasn't competitive with regional alternatives. The business needed a redesign that could directly address retention and drive adoption of new features like virtual cards and transaction insights.

Goal

To modernise the mobile app with a more intuitive interface, simplified transaction flows, and added features that support user needs and intelligent financial tools.

Research insights

Pesawise had access to detailed user data, including average age ranges and work sectors. The core user base spanned highly educated and tech-savvy individuals aged 15 to 45—ranging from tech enthusiasts and creatives to entrepreneurs and business owners. Leveraging this data, we conducted targeted user research through surveys and a series of interviews, which helped us uncover valuable insights and feedback, outlined below.

User Feedback showed frustrations around delays, cluttered screens, and difficulty finding specific actions (e.g., repeat transactions).

Usage Analytics highlighted that most users dropped off at onboarding or during mid-way stages of sending money.

Stakeholder Interviews revealed business goals to introduce features like virtual cards, transaction insights, and easier identity verification.

Competitor Benchmarking showed a lack of visual and UX parity compared to international players, even though the service offered similar functionality.

Competitive audit

A competitive audit is essentially an overview of your competitors strength and weaknesses. There is both direct and indirect competitors that is those who are offering similar products to users and those who aren’t directly offering similar but related services. For this project , we audited many apps but 3 were the main focus, Access bank app, Send app (flutterwave), and Dash app

Old designs

Proposed solutions

Streamlined Onboarding & Dashboard: The onboarding experience and dashboard layout will be redesigned to enhance usability and reduce cognitive load, ensuring users can navigate the app more effortlessly from the outset.

Scalable Design System & UI Kit: A modular design system, complete with reusable components and consistent styling, will be developed to maintain visual coherence and enable future scalability across the application.

Enhanced Core Features: Key functionalities will be introduced or improved to deliver a more comprehensive and user-friendly experience:

A wider range of bill payment options will be added, including categories such as school fees, utilities, and other essential services to meet users’ everyday needs.

The money transfer process will be restructured to be faster and more intuitive, with a simplified user journey that reduces friction and decision fatigue.

The in-app support experience will be upgraded, featuring a more interactive chat interface. This will aim to reduce complaints and target a maximum ticket resolution time of 24 hours.

Users will benefit from advanced transaction features such as filters, categories, downloadable reports, and a more detailed transaction screen—making it easier to manage and understand account activity.

Onboarding flow

The redesigned onboarding flow prioritises clarity from the first screen, leading with the app's core value props through illustrated feature highlights rather than dense text. One key research-driven decision was moving language selection to the very beginning of the flow. Since a significant portion of Pesawise's user base are Swahili speakers, surfacing that choice early reduced friction for non-English users and set a more inclusive tone before a single transaction was made.

Bank transfer flow

The redesigned bank transfer experience is faster and more intuitive from start to finish. Frequent beneficiaries now appear directly on the transfer screen, so returning users can skip manual entry entirely. Your daily limit based on your account tier is prominently displayed upfront, reducing failed transactions before they happen. The step-by-step flow has been streamlined with fewer taps, clearer labels, and a more logical progression, making it easier for users to complete transfers confidently the first time.

Selected screen improvement

Home Screen: After internal testing, we found that users felt the home screen was overwhelming due to the action buttons being embedded in the balance card and poor contrast in the quick actions section. In the revised design, we opted for a cleaner layout with a simplified card, repositioned the action button below, and used a lighter shade of the primary colour for better contrast.

Send Button: The send button was replaced with a swipe-to-confirm interaction to bring intentionality to the payment action. In fintech, accidental taps on high-stakes actions like sending money can erode user trust — a swipe gesture requires deliberate effort, significantly reducing the chance of unintended transfers. This pattern is a well-established best practice in financial apps and has proven effective at giving users a sense of control and confidence at the most critical moment of the transaction.

Challenges

Navigating Technical Constraints: I often had to work closely with developers to understand which design implementations were technically feasible. In cases where limitations arose, I redesigned and compromised thoughtfully to ensure functionality was not lost.

Balancing User Needs with Business Limitations: A key challenge was aligning user expectations with what the business could support at the time. I made informed compromises, always backed by data, to find a balance between usability and practicality.

Optimising for Low-End Devices: Given the target audience’s reliance on older mobile devices, I had to ensure the app remained lightweight and responsive. This meant removing unnecessary animations, avoiding large image assets, and simplifying transitions to improve performance and load times.

Prototype

Impacts and results

Stronger User Engagement: Within three months of launch, user retention increased by 25% (up from a 38% baseline pre-launch), and drop-off rates during key transaction flows — particularly the send money and onboarding journeys — dropped by 18%. Improvements were tracked via Firebase and Google Play Console, confirming measurably smoother user behaviour across critical paths.

Faster Product Development: A modular, component-based design system reduced design-to-dev handoff time significantly, allowing the team to ship new features with greater consistency and less rework. Components built for this redesign have since been reused across subsequent feature releases, compounding efficiency over time.

Reduced Support Load: Redesigned user flows — particularly around transaction errors, identity verification, and bill payments — led to a measurable drop in inbound support tickets related to navigation confusion. Customer service teams reported fewer repeat complaints on flows that had previously generated the most friction.

Stronger User Engagement: Within three months of launch, user retention increased by 25%, and drop-off rates during key transaction flows dropped by 18%. These improvements were tracked using analytics tools such as Firebase and Google play console which provided clear insights into user behaviour and confirmed a smoother, more satisfying user experience.

Improved App Store Performance: The redesigned app received higher ratings and more positive reviews on both the Play Store and App Store. Using feedback data and behavioural metrics from Firebase and Google play console, we were able to validate increased user satisfaction and improved usability across key journeys.

Efficient Product Development: The introduction of a scalable design system allowed the internal team to accelerate feature development, ensuring consistency and reducing design-to-dev time

Enhanced Customer Support Experience: Clearer user flows and improved interface logic significantly reduced user confusion, resulting in fewer support tickets and more positive feedback from customer service teams.

Takeaways

Don't Design for Competitors, Design for Your Users: Early in the project, competitive benchmarking almost led us to adopt patterns from international fintech apps that didn't fit our users' context. Our research revealed that Pesawise users on low-end Android devices needed speed and clarity over feature richness. That reality kept us grounded — and it's a check I now apply at the start of every project.

A Design System Is a Product Decision, Not Just a Design Deliverable: Building the component system for this project wasn't just about visual consistency — it directly influenced how the engineering team scoped and estimated features. When developers could reference a shared library instead of interpreting one-off designs, the feedback loop shortened and the final build stayed much closer to the intended design. I learned to treat the system as a product in its own right, with its own maintenance needs and documentation.

Feasibility Conversations Belong in Discovery, Not Handoff: On this project, some of my early interaction designs — particularly around animated transitions and real-time balance updates — had to be significantly scaled back due to device performance constraints. The lesson wasn't just "talk to devs earlier." It was that technical constraints are a design input, not a blocker. Bringing developers into the process during wireframing, not after final UI, changed the quality of decisions we made together.

Design Grounded in Real User Needs: Design thinking is most effective when it’s rooted in real user data and aligned with business goals—not just aesthetics or trends. Adding features just because another app has them often misses the mark. Tailoring services and experiences to your actual users should always take precedence.

The Power of a Component-Based System: A well-structured, component-based design system ensures visual consistency and improves efficiency across multiple use cases. It speeds up the design and development process by reducing repetition and aligning the UI across screens and platforms.

Collaborating Closely with Developers: Working closely with developers uncovers feasibility issues early on, helping designers avoid unrealistic ideas. This collaboration improves design decisions, enhances product quality, and significantly reduces unnecessary back-and-forth during implementation.

Next: WalletWise Mobile app