From Tap to Track: Smarter Spending within Apple Wallet
TIMELINE
10 weeks
Mar 2025
TEAM
Lauren Pak
Elise Kim
Michelle Escuardo
ROLE
Product Designer
Visual Designer
SKILLS
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Prototyping
Product Thinking
THE CHALLENGE
Budgeting in a time of transition
Life after college comes with big changes—new routines, responsibilities, and financial pressures. For many young professionals, managing expenses can feel overwhelming on top of adjusting to full-time work. Budgeting becomes just one more task in an already demanding transition.
THE WHY
Disjointed, effortful, and easy to drop
Most financial apps live outside our everyday routines. They require users to download a new app, start from scratch, or toggle between banking and budgeting. There’s a disconnect between where we spend and where we track.
THE SOLUTION
Bringing budgeting into Apple Wallet
We saw an opportunity to meet users where they already are: Apple Wallet. iBudget turns routine transactions into moments of reflection.
The goal: make financial awareness feel native, visual, and automatic.
RESEARCH & USER TESTING
Insights into the struggles of work-life-money balance
We interviewed financially independent young professionals familiar with Apple Wallet to explore their post-college finance habits and budgeting challenges. Through task-based interviews and concept testing, we uncovered a desire for budgeting tools that feel effortless and integrated—not like traditional finance apps.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Why another budgeting app wasn't the answer
We looked at leading tools like Mint, Copilot, and Monarch to understand what’s working—and what’s not. Most offered robust features like expense tracking or credit monitoring, but required users to leave their daily flow. Even Apple Wallet, while sleek and secure, had no budgeting support.
Across the board, tools felt disconnected from the moment money is spent. Budgeting happened after the fact, in separate apps, and often felt tedious or overwhelming—especially for young professionals juggling new financial responsibilities.
This gap revealed a clear opportunity: bring budgeting into the existing flow of payments, not outside it.
DESIGNING THE FLOW
Embedding budgeting where spending happens
Instead of switching apps, users see category options right before they pay. With a simple tap, they assign the expense to a category—making the act of spending also a moment of reflection.
Onboarding is lightweight: a Wallet card introduces the feature, then guides users through choosing categories and setting monthly amounts via scrollable inputs. No forms, no friction.
ITERATION & REFINEMENT
Keeping it visual, simple, & native
We began with lo-fi sketches, leaning into Apple’s design language—clean, gesture-driven, and focused. Translating these wireframes into Figma, we worked out how each interaction would play out and delved into how to refine the process to be functional.
These insights guided our design of a budgeting experience that’s visual, easy to set up, and embedded directly in the payment flow.
DESIGN DECISIONS
A quick glance = full clarity
Users can view their dashboard with color-coded bars, per-category limits, and real-time spend tracking.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Fluid, tactile control
Users adjust category budgets by scrolling—a familiar gesture that adds precision and ease to setup. No typing, just intuitive movement.
DESIGN DECISIONS
Select Category as you Tap-to-Pay
Before tapping to pay, users select a category linked to their card. This small, embedded action keeps tracking aligned with real-time behavior.
EXPLORATIONS
Even smarter budgeting with AI
For future explorations, we are interested in implementing AI to automatically categorize transactions based on spending patterns and user behavior, eliminating the need for manual selection. By leveraging machine learning, the system will intelligently assign expenses to the most relevant budget category, ensuring seamless and accurate financial tracking while adapting to user preferences over time.
NEXT STEPS
Smarter, Seamless Budgeting
Moving forward, we envision Apple Wallet integration for real-time budget tracking in development. Personally, I’m excited about the potential of this system, as this project deepened my belief in designing around real habits, not ideal ones. Though the project timeline has ended, I’m eager to keep refining and pushing this concept forward!
LIVE DEMO
Try it out!
I'm constantly refining the experience—try out the interactive demo and I'd love to hear your thoughts!