Paytm or PhonePe : The Age of Digital money!
A series dedicated to analyze the experience of digital wallets and ease of handling them from UX perspective. The article compares the customer experience of two of the widely used payments app Paytm and PhonePe to understand what aids an app to fight competition and retain their user base.
A Score of years ago when ATM revolutionised the way we exchanged and handled money, who would have thought that someday we would be doing transactions without cash/card in our pockets. Isn’t it amusing how did we go from all Cash to Cashless?
As we know a mobile wallet is a cash store in which the money is stored in the app, the user registers himself by KYC on the mobile phone and makes payment or transfers money through E-wallet or UPI ( Unified Payments Interface). Digital wallet became a known affair after the implementation of the Digital India campaign by the Government of India on 1st July 2015 and it grew at a larger pace after 8th November 2016 (Demonetisation). At that time Paytm turned out to be the savior for people. The rest as we know is history!
Read out to find, how these two apps satisfy their user’s need!
The Similarities in Use Case of Paytm & PhonePe
- Online money transfer and bill payment.
- Allow users to link their Bank Accounts.
- Mobile recharge (prepaid/ postpaid)
- Checking Bank balance
- Business Model : (Send and recieve money)
The Dissimilarities in Paytm & PhonePe
- Modes of Payment
Paytm: Allows transactions across multiple modes like wallets, UPI and payment gateway.
PhonePe: Majorly into UPI payments.
2. Online Shopping
Paytm: It has it’s own mall.
PhonePe: It has integrated several other online stores/apps to it’s platform to bring everything under one roof.
3. Booking & Recharges
Paytm: The Flight, train and bus ticket booking can be done from in-house paytm travel section.
PhonePe: Unlike paytm, again it has integrated other travel booking apps in one app to book tickets.
4. Transfer money to bank account from the app
Paytm: There is a 5% convenience fee for transferring money from your Paytm wallet to a bank account but transfer from bank to wallet is free.
PhonePe: It has recently started it’s wallet service (but phonePe is widely used for its UPI based transaction which doesn’t charge you for any transaction).
UPI transfer through PhonePe is much faster as compared to paytm
Home Screen
Paytm
Before December 29,2019, paytm’s home page looked like the left image, the homepage has been revamped and now the new home screen looks like the image on the right. Here are few points which I had in mind after coming across the new interface:
- The new UI feels like an attempt to remove the unnecessary clutter and anything which was extra on the screen earlier. (Even the hamburger menu has not been left untouched = “#3 is messy”)
- Now the home screen has lesser number of icons visible and more of breathing space in the screen . (breathable area=cleaner UI ; so much of breathable area= lack of cohesion between elements )
- I appreciate the efforts to solve the user frustration of searching a particular icon from so many given options on the screen earlier (as we can see now, they have very nicely segregated and organised things under categories of recharge/pay/ travel so on & so forth. #Card_Sorting_on_point )
- Iconography has been changed (one obviuos reason behind the change could be the resemblance of notification icon to ice cream bar before :p)
Home Screen – Paytm Or PhonePe
opinion 1 – Both the apps have 5 icons in the bottom tab bar, in my opinion Paytm’s Pay Money could have been better suited at Scan QR icon’s place like a CTA (cause:Fitt’s Law)! Secondly ,the scan QR code icon could have been placed on the top bar replacing Add Money and sending ‘Add Money’ to ‘Pay Money’s ’ position .
The positioning and proximity of the main task icons in PhonePe makes it simpler and fast to perform functions without any confusion.
opinion 2 – phonePe doesn’t offer a search feature (which is strange and interesting as well because I too didn’t feel the need of a search icon while using the app). On the other hand, paytm’s search is an essential feature for the app which according to me was nicely emphasised before revamping.
opinion 3 – As much as the two screens are concerned , we can see how colour & Contrast play a major role in reducing the cognitive load. Here, the use of app’s primary colour around the primary action icons guide users towards the main features.
Also PhonePe uses accent colour to enhance the UI and bring rhythm to the design elements.
Passbook or History ?
opinion 1 – In both the cases one can easily find out where they can get the record of their transactions. Showing a statement of all the transactions in the first place is a better idea,as shown by phonePe.
opinion 2 – Consistency is the key. It helps users to understand the product easily and quickly. (Here ,the design system comes to play)
Who did it better?
After using both the apps for quite some time for now, I felt that phonePe even though was launched after paytm and inspite of the huge user base that paytm has gained over time,it would have not been an easy task to enter a monopoly and be better at it. The main objective of the whole comparison was to find out the answer to- What gave phonePe an edge ?
On comparing both the interfaces and task flow I found out that phonePe has:
- Wisely used the laws of UX,
- Colour & contrast, especially the use of accent colour;
- A thought out customer journey mapping (which helped in maintaining the consistency).
- Also one of the key factor is the fast and smooth completion of task.
Google pay yet another payments app by Google which brought a fresh and exciting concept of Gamification to digital wallet, provided us with one more option to transfer and receive money directly into our bank accounts, but which is the best among these totally depends on user to user and on use cases as well.
In my opinion, PhonePe has it all covered and is catering to bigger user needs! So, its a win-win for phonePe and a win-win for it’s 218 million users as well :)
Till next time!🌷
