As mobile devices emerge as tools for transacting and self-identifying, designers face challenging new interactions and user expectations, especially from payment scenarios. Consumers expect mobile payment experiences to be frictionless and familiar while faithfully protecting their financial data. Falling short on either of these aspects will cause users to drop out, or worse, will compromise their financial privacy. This book will show designers and developers how to meet these challenges through user experience (UX) best practices, as well as provide a primer on the world of mobile commerce.

When defining generally what a mobile payment is, I find it helpful to start by looking at who is paying whom, rather than delineating these experiences according to the facilitating technology (we’ll get into that later). There are four basic categories, as outlined in Table 1.

Of these four, this book focuses on consumer payments, though we will touch on the other three scenarios when appropriate. We’ll talk about both in-person (standing inside a brick-and-mortar store) or remote (placing an order to pick up later) experiences. One reason for focusing on the consumer experience is sheer numbers: there are more mobile users who are consumers than those who are merchants. The other reason is that of these four scenarios, the act of making a purchase is the most nuanced and prone to ambiguity, and therefore the most challenging.

I may tackle the other three payment categories in future editions of this book. Merchant payments in particular would warrant a whole series (have you ever seen or used a point-of-sale terminal, pre-Square and the like? Yikes). At any rate, the tenets and recommendations I’ve included in this book, particularly those around ease of use and fostering user trust, could readily be applied to any sort of mobile commerce interaction.

The audience for this book is designers, developers, and product managers interested in building a mobile commerce experience. I hope this book serves as a primer for experience makers from a variety of environments—from maverick startups looking to change the way we use our phones to those entrenched in the world of banking who are looking to integrate a new payment capability into their existing mobile services. This book started off as a simple list of mobile design principles, tailored for transactional experiences, which I kept for my own reference. I hope you will find it inspirational and instructive.

This book is organized into the following seven chapters:

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This book would not have been possible without the boundless love and support of my beautiful wife, Sabrina, who put up with my late nights and general absentmindedness about anything not mobile commerce–related (parenting, household chores, personal hygiene, basic conversation skills) for the better part of a year while I wrote this book. To my giggly and bright baby boy, Miles, I am thankful that at six months you figured out how to sleep for 10 hours at a time, giving me a reliable daily window to write this book. I am looking forward to sketching and building new things with you, and helping you see our world filtered through your own creativity.

I’m thankful to my Mom for teaching me to approach any problem from all angles, not just how a textbook prescribes it (an uncommon view, coming from an algebra teacher). She also instilled in me the core values of Southern Hospitality, which influenced my own personal stamp on user experience design: courtesy, grace, and inclusion. I am grateful also to my Dad for teaching me that the best way to figure something out is to get your hands dirty, and to always pay attention to the details.

I am indebted to the impeccable staff at O’Reilly for helping me bring this book to life. In particular, I’d like to thank Mary Treseler, for putting the whole crazy idea in my head in the first place and then shaping that idea into a viable narrative. Amy Jollymore had the arduous task of slogging through each chapter to make some sense of the ramblings of a first-time writer. I thank you both for your guidance throughout this process. My first window into the world of user experience design was framed by great O’Reilly titles like Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and Designing Web Interfaces, so it is humbling for me to contribute to the wealth of knowledge available from this community.

I’ve been blessed with the tutelage of a few visionary mentors who have had a huge impact on my understanding of design for mobile financial services. My first design manager, Evan Gerber, instilled in me a holistic view of UX and how it fits into a person’s daily life, as well as the ability to be creative under seemingly insurmountable design constraints. Evan is also responsible for stealing me away from the world of library and information science, and helped me to connect the dots from what I learned from that discipline to the broader needs of all technology users. I am also endlessly appreciative of my managers at Monitise, Stuart Cook and Chris Craver, for imparting decades of wisdom from their expertise in the world of financial technology, as well as for looking through early drafts to check my facts and offer feedback on the evolution of payments technology.

Lastly, I am thankful for the illuminating feedback from my early reviewers—Evan Gerber, Matthew Russell, and Tommy Wolber—for sharing their insight and sense-checking the material from the perspective of a wider tech and design audience. It’s humbling to have input from some of the brightest minds in the industry.

The world of technology is always in flux, and this is especially true in financial tech. I encourage you to visit my blog on mobile payments design to see my take on these emerging experiences through the eye of UX, and to share your views on this fascinating topic: http://mobilepaymentux.com.