Travel, Spend & Settle

Creating a shared expense splitting feature for travellers

design lead project

THE GOAL

To allow users to create a group spending ledger and settle their travel dues, in a unified and streamlined journey.

Increase Niyo nudges/recommendations *free marketing*

Have a shared feed for common view of shared finances

Settle dues timely

MY ROLE

Product designer on the project supervised by Mr. Shreyas Chaudhary.

TARGET USERS

Group travellers

BUT WAIT!!
DOESN'T A SPLIT FEATURE ALREADY EXISTS IN MANY UPI APPS?

Well…. Ignorance is bliss. Just kidding!

We did a quick market landscaping.

Taking all the major parallel products in the market involving any form of payment splitting capability, to understand user interest and patterns better and help us scope the expected outcome realistically.

THE RESIDING MARKET KING

Splitwise

Est. 1.3 – 2 million Indian active users

SHARED LEDGER CAPABILITY

Excellent for detailed shared ledger creation and reminders.

PAYMENT CAPABILITY

No in-app payment, relies on external payment sources.

SETTLEMENT TRACKING

Best detailed ledger with expense history, notes.

DISCOVERABILITY & UX

Intuitive, clean and seamless UX with clear UI and "+" for recording expenses

CROSS-BORDER FRICTION & SECURITY

Manual payments increase friction abroad. No security measures required

THE COURT

UPI Apps

Google Pay, PhonePe & Paytm

SHARED LEDGER CAPABILITY

Limited shared ledger creation as the group settlement is based on individual payment/expense level.

PAYMENT CAPABILITY

Supports UPI domestically & international in a few countries

SETTLEMENT TRACKING

Basic ledger capabilities results in limited settlement tracking.

DISCOVERABILITY & UX

Split feature hidden or buried, with easy to miss integrations

CROSS-BORDER FRICTION & SECURITY

UPI abroad works. All the apps are highly compliant with the security protocols.

WHY DOES IT MAKE SENSE FOR NIYO?

A survey conducted with 600+ existing users showed,

55% of our users, travel in a group

In these travel groups, approximately 52% of the travellers did not own a Niyo Card. Providing a lucrative opportunity to introduce Niyo to an accessible but untapped user base.

Capability to unify the user journey

From importing transaction to paying through UPI, we have the capability to allow users to track, record & settle expenses in one go.

High customer demand

Due to lack of any payment methods and reminders in current ledger apps, users have to face the awkward prospect of asking for money.

In a meet up hosted by Niyo for our customers in 2024, one of the most demanded features was a shared expense feature.

HOW DID WE APPROACH IT?

Chat based ledger

After a few rounds of explorations and feedback sessions with the team, we decided to settle on a chat based ledger vs the usual sheet based ledger, allowing users to discuss and react to expenses and settle them in an instant.

USER FLOW CHALLENGES

Instead of rolling out the red carpet, we were rolling out a paperwork marathon.

For context purposes…

Here is an overview of our user registration. And as you can see our onboarding asks for too much information before new users even meet Niyo.

Mission Onboarding

With three distinct onboarding paths on the table, we had to analyse each option carefully, since they had system wide impact. So all the concerned teams huddled, debated trade offs, and weighed every angle.

Here’s a glimpse of how we landed on the one that made it through.

I'm not crying. I'm not. Please.

It will do.

Itssa party time!

Factors

New guest specific user registration

UPI only onboarding - Niyo Pay

Restructure our onboarding to product specific registrations

Tech

Making changes to the current user registration is a mammoth tech effort.

Already exists, minimal changes required to nudge new user to join the group.

That's making the entire app onboarding again.

User Experience

Frictionless registration for the guest users.

It is not ideal but it is not the worst option and has it's own benefits.

We can accommodate the expanding range of products better for a diverse user base

System architecture

Do we make them a separate homepage too? What if they want to buy the card? How will we merge the two flows?

No system level changes required. UPI can be used to settle dues.

Optimised registration for all our different products, solve for their discovery too.

System architecture

Securing victory by 2 happy Kevins and 1 excited Stanley,

UPI only onboarding was our way ahead.

UPI only onboarding already exists,

so embedding the link to Niyo Pay instead of Niyo Global in the group invite would ensure that the new users just go through a usual UPI registration.

UPI in turn ensures that group members have at least one

payment channel ensuring a seamless settle experience.

USER FLOW CHALLENGES

Inviting friends shouldn’t put existing users on pause, we didn’t want ledger to wait for a RSVP!

They are Here in Spirit

We designed group creation using ghost IDs, allowing users to create groups and add expenses for contacts who haven’t joined yet.

Payments and requests are restricted until they join, but the ledger can still be updated.

Ledgers don’t need a full house,

allowing a single user to create the entire ledger without all the math.

USER FLOW CHALLENGES

There were two ways to settle, first expense based and second overall settle, each rewires our feature structure.

Settle on Your Schedule

Pay for each expense as it’s added to the group chat, great for big-ticket international travel bookings and keeping cash flow healthy.

Or, wait and settle everything at the end, perfect for skipping small bills and hassles in a long chat.

INGRESS POINTS

Niyo Pay (In-house UPI)

Groups Widget

GROUP CREATION

Admin

Adding members and group details

Members

Consent to join group

SPLITTING EXPENSE

Adding Amount

Option to switch currency

to support international travellers better

CHATTING

Receiving Expenses

INR first approach to simplify ledger for users

Discussing Expenses

Comments for expense for easy tracking

SETTLING BALANCES

Paying Members

Transparent Balance Summary

SETTLING BALANCES

Reminding Users

System-generated messages with playful stickers,

feels lighter and more system-driven than personal.

Attached Payment QR

to make the reminders more payment driven.

Grouped, Solve, Ship, User flow in action

We ran a guerrilla research study to capture users’ impressions of the flow and spot any gaps or issues. Participants were asked to create a group and add an expense.