Venmo for Business

Helping people discover local businesses inside Venmo.

We redesigned the home feed and business profile to help people discover local businesses through everyday payments.

My role: UX/UI designer and researcher
Context: Designing With Data
University team project
Timeline: Spring 2025 · 7 weeks
Methods: Sketching & wireframing
High-fidelity Figma design
A/B prototype testing in Maze
Post-task surveys
Quantitative & qualitative analysis

Original screens from the later project concept, paired with a new illustration of the business context. The A/B test used the earlier prototypes shown below.

01 / Opportunity

Turning business mentions into business discovery.

Despite many small businesses using Venmo as a method of payment, the business profiles we studied gave them limited space to showcase and promote their brands, presenting an opportunity to design a business profile feature that builds trust, increases brand visibility, and strengthens local community connections.

Recreated example: Alex paid Jamie, with Maple Street Grill in the payment note. — **Payment notes in the feed** Payment notes already gave local businesses visibility in the feed.

Recreated example: Sam paid Taylor, with Coffee at Corner Cup in the payment note. — **Payment notes in the feed** Payment notes already gave local businesses visibility in the feed.

Profiles before the redesign In our study baseline, the business profile followed the personal profile layout, with little room to show what the business offered.

Hypothesis

We hypothesized that enhancing Venmo’s business profiles with branding, product information, and credibility cues would improve brand awareness, user engagement, and perceived trust in small businesses.

02 / Early concepts

Sketching the path from feed to profile.

We began with sketches to explore how a business could appear in the feed and what people would see when they opened its profile.

Original team sketches of business cards and profiles — Early sketches: exploring the entry into a business profile.

A second set of original team interface sketches — Alternative arrangements discussed before the Figma prototype.

03 / Proposed solution

A feed card opens a richer business profile.

The redesign let people discover a local business from a payment in Venmo’s home feed and see what it offered without leaving the app.

Find the business in the feed

View original annotated board ↗

Home feed A business card links a payment to the business’s profile.

Business profile Branding and ratings give people context before they choose to follow.

See where it is and what it offers

View original annotated board ↗

Original store information screen with the address, hours, map and photos. — **Store information** Check the address and hours.

Original menu screen with categories and a featured item. — **Menu** Browse categories and see a featured item.

04 / A/B testing

Could people find and explore a business?

We used Maze to run an unmoderated A/B prototype test. We compared a recreation of the existing Venmo experience (A, control) with our redesigned feed and business profile (B, treatment). A short survey followed each prototype task.

We asked participants to imagine they had just paid a friend, then find and explore a business from the home feed. This let us compare how people navigated when looking for a business.

What changed between A and B

We tested the feed and profile changes together.

Home feed

Control feed showing the food truck’s name and a payment note for chicken over rice. — **A · Control**

B · Redesign

A business card beneath the payment opened the truck’s profile.

Business profile

A · Control

The business used the same profile layout as a personal account.

B · Redesign

The branded profile offered Follow, Store Info and View Menu.

Open full control board ↗ Open full redesign board ↗

Metrics

Behavioral · Maze prototype paths

Direct discovery: How often the first move from Home went straight to the business profile.
Engagement within the profile: Clicks and paths into Menu, Store Info and Follow where those actions were available.

Perceptual & qualitative · Post-task survey

Reported discovery: Whether participants said they found the business profile.
Ease, informativeness and trust: Ease of finding the profile on a 1–8 scale, then informativeness and perceived trust on 1–10 scales.
Open-ended feedback: What stood out about the business, what was missing and what people would change.

05 / Behavioral results

More people reached the business profile directly.

In the redesign, 8 of 13 went straight from the home feed to the business profile, compared with 1 of 9 in the control.

Direct path from Home

Control1 of 911%

Redesign8 of 1362%

Observed first move to the profile.

Bars show the share of each prototype block on a 0–100% scale. These are small samples from a task that prompted business discovery. The records leave variant assignment unclear.

Where people went from the home feed

In the control, people detoured through personal profiles or exited. The redesign’s navigation paths show people opening the menu and store information and trying Follow.

Control · Prototype navigationSome participants went through another profile and returned Home before finding the business.

Redesign · Prototype navigationMore participants went directly to the profile, where they could explore details or try Follow.

Menu, Store Info and Follow were new to the redesign. The team noted that some Follow clicks may have been driven by curiosity about the new feature. Whether people would follow or revisit a business in everyday use remained open.

06 / Perceptual & qualitative results

People rated the redesigned profile more informative.

In the post-task survey, the redesign also received higher ratings for ease of finding the profile and perceived trust. Open-ended feedback showed what people found helpful and what they wanted to change.

Reported discovery

Control3 of 933%

Redesign9 of 1369%

Participants who said they found the business profile in the post-task survey.

Perceptual ratings

Ease of finding the profile

Control: 4.5 / 8 6 ratings
Redesign: 7.3 / 8 9 ratings

Perceived informativeness

Control: 3.8 / 10 4 ratings
Redesign: 6.3 / 10 9 ratings

Perceived trust

Control: 4.3 / 10 3 ratings
Redesign: 6.5 / 10 8 ratings

Maze averages on the original scales. Counts are the ratings plotted for each question, which participants could skip. Treat these as directional feedback from the people who answered.

Qualitative feedback

Photos and store details added context

“I liked the integration of photos and store information within the app. Also being able to look at the menu made the whole experience feel very contained.”

The menu raised a question about ordering

“I would see that feature as being valuable if I was pre-ordering using Venmo but I wouldn't use a payment app to peruse a food truck's menu.”

One participant wanted to find nearby businesses

“Maybe having a feature where you can see what trucks/businesses near you accept venmo?”

07 / Reflection

Key Learnings

What worked

The new design increased both brand awareness and trust, validating our hypothesis.
User feedback revealed unexpected insights and usability concerns, highlighting the value of testing for uncovering things we hadn’t considered.

What did not work

Introducing multiple new elements at once made it difficult to attribute observed improvements to a single design change.
Although many users clicked the follow button in the variant, post-test feedback and behavioral patterns suggested they did so out of curiosity, not genuine intent.

Discovered Opportunities

Desire for Local Discovery: Several users expressed interest in being able to discover or search for nearby businesses.
Mismatch in Expectations: Some users noted that the menu layout resembled a food ordering app, which felt out of place on Venmo.

Insights

While our findings were promising, future tests should isolate individual features and include more realistic use scenarios. Testing with both everyday users and small business owners could help validate the concept more meaningfully.

08 / Next steps

Two proposed experiments.

Proposed experiment 01

Map-based discovery test

Why: A business card could only appear alongside a payment in the feed. A map would give people a direct way to find nearby businesses and give merchants a second way to be seen.
Compare: A home feed with business cards versus the same feed plus a searchable map with filters.
Measure: Profile visits, including harder-to-find businesses, and perceived usefulness.

Map and search conceptBrowse nearby businesses by distance or category.

Proposed experiment 02

Menu preview test

Why: The full menu could make Venmo look like a food-ordering app and lead people to expect they could place an order. The preview was designed to show what a business sells while keeping the profile focused on payments.
Compare: A basic profile versus one with a swipeable row of featured dishes and a See more link to an external review page.
Measure: Follow rate, clarity about what the business sells, and perceived trust.

Menu preview conceptSee a few featured dishes directly on the business profile.

09 / Product update

Venmo’s 2026 redesign

I was proud to see Venmo put a similar idea into practice with business Shoutouts in its payment feed.

Four screens from Venmo’s redesigned app. The third shows a nursery payment with a Give a shoutout button. — **PayPal’s May 2026 feed announcement** “Give a shoutout” appears on the third screen.

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