App Review: Paga Android App

The new Paga app

Hello… Today I’ll be giving my thoughts on the new Paga mobile app. Paga is a mobile payment platform that allows users to receive and make payments through their mobile devices. It was founded by Tayo Oviosu in 2009.

Paga officially launched their new mobile app yesterday. The app is available for free download on the Play store here and App store here. I attended the launch event and these are my thoughts on the app.

Device: Samsung device OS: Android 8.0.0(Oreo) App version: 1.0

For this review, I would take into consideration 3 major things.

1. UI design
2. UX — User experience & usability
3. Features & Functionality

UI design

The app has a simple fun design, predominantly orange which is Paga’s brand colour and a lot of cool illustrations.

Things I like

• I like the use of illustrations on different screens in the app.

Splash Screen

• I like that the onboarding screens are on the same page with the login and sign up buttons. It saves users the stress of having to scroll through multiple on-boarding screens before getting to the login and sign up buttons.
• I like that you can customize your app by selecting a theme colour, adding a profile photo and so on. It gives the app a cool personal feel.

Things to work on

• I noticed an inconsistency in the style of illustrations used on the splash screen and on other screens e.g the login and sign up screens.
• The “Enter amount” prompt on the “Add money” and “Withdraw” screens is not easy to see and might make a bit confusing for first-time users

Withdraw screen

UX and usability

Things I like

• The app session times out when you leave the app and requires you to verify your identity when you return to it. This is really important because it makes the app more secure.
• The app layout is pretty easy to navigate through. You can find what you want easily.

Things to work on

• For most issues I faced, I kept getting this “Seems there’s a technical issue. Please email us at service@mypaga.com if it persists” error message. I don’t think the message was very helpful as the error could be a network issue or a problem with the action I was trying to perform and so on.

• I think the email address in the message above should be clickable and should open up the user’s default email client pre-filled with the Paga service email address.
• To register on the app you have to provide a password that is a minimum of 10 characters long with at least one number, one uppercase, and one lowercase letter. This is higher than Paypal’s requirement of a minimum of 7 characters, mix of letters, numbers, and/or special characters. I know this is to make the app more secure but most people use the same password for multiple apps and it could be a chore trying to remember your paga password. Having a phone with fingerprint verification makes it easier as you can use this option to sign in after registering

Features & Functionality

The Paga mobile app has a lot of cool features. Let’s take a look at some of them

Things I like

• The ability to send/request for money from anybody using their email or phone number
• I like those cool short answers you can give when you’re rejecting a user’s money request e.g “Hmm, Nice try"
• The unique customizable justpaga.me link that makes it possible for any user with the link to send money to me using their Paga account, debit card, or direct bank debit. I’m sending it to my uncles and aunties soon….
• I can send money to anyone for free i.e there are no hidden transfer/ transaction fees. This is a really important feature

Things to work on

• I experienced some difficulty in adding and removing cards from my app. It worked sometimes and didn’t work at other times… might be a network issue… I’m not sure
• The card capture(camera) way of adding a card doesn’t seem to work very well. But to be fair I didn’t spend much time on it.
• I could not successfully import contacts from my phone to my Paga contact list.
• I experienced difficulty at some times while trying to login. I experienced this while using my password and also my fingerprint.

Feature suggestions

I think it would be a real game changer if Paga users can use international cards and also send and receive money internationally. The CEO, Tayo Oviosu hinted at the possibility of this happening soon.

The new Paga app is pretty cool, it gives us a good mix of PayPal and Venmo like features that didn’t exist previously in the Nigerian fintech space. Although there are some bugs to work on I believe they’ll learn from users’ interaction with the app. I look forward to using the app frequently and seeing improvements as time goes on.

Tell me what you think about the new Paga app in the comments section. You can add your justpaga.me link too Who knows? I might send you money….. and request for it back.

References: www.investopedia.com, disscussions with Yemi and Busola