Digital banking app · UAE
WatPay
Four financial products in one app, behind a single identity check.
- Role
- Product Designer
- Timeline
- Oct 2021 – May 2022
- Platform
- Web & Mobile
Where it started
WatPay is a payment app for people and small businesses moving money across borders — transfers, multi-currency accounts, cards and crypto in one place.
It started as a money-transfer service and grew from there. I was on the project from the start, in October 2021, as a product designer.
I worked on this as part of the product team, across research, flows, wireframes and final UI for both the mobile app and the web platform.
What people told us
Naya Thompson · Freelancer, paid in two currencies
“I gave them my passport when I opened the account. Why again for a card?”
Liam Carter · Frequent remitter
“I have three apps for money and none of them talk to each other.”
Michael Al-Mansoori · Small business owner
“I started the business account and gave up halfway.”
Adam Sinclair · First-time crypto buyer
“I didn't know if it was approved or still waiting.”
Scope
- Research
- Mobile app
- Web platform
- KYC & KYB flows
- Design system
The constraint
Verify once. Every product after that just opens.
Each product WatPay added arrived with its own sign-up.
Accounts, cards, crypto and multi-currency wallets each carry their own regulatory checks. We built one verification path that individuals and businesses both enter, and opened each product against what had already been proven rather than asking again.
My Approach
- 01
Core structure
Sign-up forks in two. A personal account needs ten screens; a business account needs forty across seven sections. Mapping it showed both paths had to land on one verified state, or every product downstream would ask again.
- 02
Sketching first
Rough flows on paper first, so structure could be argued over and thrown away cheaply. The sketches carry an early navigation that later changed — cheaper to find on paper than in build.
- 03
Design system
One kit ran the whole platform. The same tab bar, cards, rows and sheets carried accounts, crypto, cards and verification, so adding a product meant assembling it rather than drawing it. That is why forty business verification screens were possible in eight months.
The Solution
Home & navigation
The balance leads, and the three tabs above it — accounts, crypto, cards — put every product one tap from the top of the screen. Scrolling drops the header and keeps the tab bar, so recent transactions and total wealth arrive without losing your place.
Home
Home, scrolled
One gate, two paths
Personal verification is ten screens: choose a type, pick a document, capture it, prove you are live. Business is forty across seven sections, from significant parties to uploaded certificates. Both paths end in the same verified state, and every product downstream reads only that.
Choose a type
Personal
Business
Crypto as another balance
Crypto is not a separate product here. It sits behind the same verification, in the same wallet, moving through the same transaction list as fiat. Buying Bitcoin uses the pattern you already learned adding dollars, so nothing new has to be explained.
Portfolio
Coin detail
Buy
Cards, virtual and physical
Virtual, physical or single-use, issued from the same sheet. Spending limits, PIN, freeze and terminate all sit in one settings screen rather than scattered through menus, so a card can be stopped in two taps from the card itself.
Choose a card
Card detail
Spending limit
Freeze or terminate
What testing changed
We ran usability sessions on business onboarding with a clickable prototype, watching participants attempt the flow end to end. It was the longest flow in the product — seven sections and roughly forty screens — so it was the one most likely to break, and the one most worth testing first.
Verification lived outside the app. Someone signing up was sent to a separate identity service to prove who they were, then sent back. In testing that hand-off was where people stopped: they had left WatPay, and they were not sure they were still signing up.
I brought verification inside. Personal and business checks became steps in onboarding rather than a detour out of it: the same header, the same progress dots, the same Save & Exit. That continuity is what made a single gate possible at all.
Verify once only works if the verifying happens where the person already is.
The Outcome
Two account types, one verification gate, and four products behind it — accounts, cards, crypto and multi-currency wallets — designed for iOS, Android and web from a single component kit. Every product opened against the same verified state, so nothing downstream asked a person to prove themselves twice.
Four products, one identity. The hard part was never the four.