MAI GROSS DAVID025
/ Money flow
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02·Money flow·2025

Millions of players. One moment of trust.

Redesigning Playtika's fragmented payment experience into one unified system.

Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Design · Eng · Product
Scope
Cross-studio system
Year
2025
What it is

An in-game purchase widget used by millions, every month.

Playtika's monetization ecosystem relies on a payment widget — the in-game purchase experience used whenever a player buys coins, bundles, or special promotions. Millions of players touch this flow every month.

But the widget lived across multiple generations, each built for different platforms and needs. That fragmentation created inconsistent UX, technical instability, and design inefficiencies.

I led the end-to-end UX/UI design of the new Unified Payment Widget — research, flows, UI, prototyping, testing, and collaboration with Product, Payments, Engineering, and multiple studio teams.

Gen 4 → Gen 5 → Gen 6 → Latest version. Four generations of widget, each built for a different moment in Playtika's growth.
The problem

The system wasn't broken. It was fragmented.

01
Fragmented UX

Each platform had a different layout, interaction model, and flow. The purchase process felt unpredictable between games and devices.

02
Maintenance overhead

Three active widgets meant more engineering, more QA, slower iteration, and no unified A/B testing.

03
Performance issues

Players — especially the 50+ US audience — faced long loads, inconsistent navigation, and confusing error states.

04
Missed revenue

A suboptimal payment flow directly impacts conversion, trust, and perceived value.

The legacy

Four surfaces. Three widgets. One mess.

Playtika operates across multiple 3rd-party and proprietary payment surfaces: Web, Android APK, Apple DTC, and PWA. Over time, each business need produced a new widget version.

Gen 4

Stable but outdated. Landscape only. Slow loading.

Gen 5

Built for Webstore. Strong localization. Used by Wooga & Youda.

Gen 6

Modern UI, portrait + localization. Underperformed in tests, PWA-incompatible.

Goals

Aligning three pulls into one system.

BUSINESS
Business goals
  • Increase conversion rate
  • Reduce infrastructure & dev overhead
  • Enable faster A/B testing
  • Standardize purchase across the portfolio
USER
User goals
  • Simple, fast, distraction-free flow
  • Readable for a 50+ US audience
  • Reduce confusion and cognitive load
  • Clear error recovery & payment choice
TECHNICAL
Technical goals
  • Works across all platforms & orientations
  • Minimize SDK updates
  • Loads significantly faster
  • Localization + studio customization
User stories

Three voices, one product.

PLAYER

"I want to complete a purchase quickly, with readable text and a simple layout."

STUDIO

"I want to customize the widget with game branding — without waiting on SDK updates."

PRODUCT MANAGER

"I want to A/B test UI variants without an engineering ticket."

Research · 01

Audit of every existing widget.

A detailed UI and flow audit across desktop, tablet, mobile landscape and mobile portrait. We mapped friction, inconsistencies, loading issues, and drop-off points.

01Most players struggled with information hierarchy
02Credit card entry caused the highest friction
03Landscape-only flows slowed input speed
04Several UI elements weren't readable enough for older audiences
Research · 02

Competitive and industry benchmark.

I studied social casino competitors, mainstream e-commerce flows, mobile payment standards, and web accessibility for aging audiences.

  • — The most effective flows minimized steps
  • — Payment methods were prioritized dynamically per region
  • — Trust came from simplicity, not from decoration
Benchmark sweep — Super Play, Pokémon GO Web Store, Star Wars (EA), Apple App Store. Patterns in hierarchy, payment-method ordering, and trust signals.
Research · 03

User testing.

We tested old widgets, early wireframes, and form-entry prototypes — portrait vs landscape — with real players, including the 50+ US audience.

Portrait mode was clearly preferred for typing
Users wanted larger buttons and bigger fonts
Error messages had to be unambiguous
Email had to be explained as required for the receipt
Reducing visual noise visibly boosted trust
Key decisions

The principles we shipped.

PRINCIPLE 01

Portrait-first improved performance.

PRINCIPLE 02

Simplicity builds trust.

PRINCIPLE 03

One flow beats flexible chaos.

Architecture

The full purchase flow, mapped.

Information architecture & user flow — pre-payment → saved PMs → confirmation → processing. Branching for new vs returning users, EU mandatory email, unsupported currency, and external popups.
Solution

One widget. Every studio. Every currency.

High-fidelity screens — product view, credit card form, success state, saved payment methods, alternative payment methods, and settings.
End-to-end player flow — purchase summary → expanded credit card form → confirmation receipt.
Customization

What studios control.

·Game header logo
·Product icon
·Loader animation
·Error / decline screen artwork

All configured from the back-office — no SDK update, no engineering ticket.

Experimentation

Designed to evolve.

Three live experiments shipped with the widget — each measured on completion, speed, and drop-off.

EXPERIMENT 01

Forced portrait vs adaptive orientation

completion · time · error · abandon

EXPERIMENT 02

Payment method ordering by region & platform

selection rate · conversion uplift

EXPERIMENT 03

Credit-card form: inline vs separate step

completion · speed · clarity

PAYMENT ORDER
LAYOUT

Every variant ships from the same component. Operators run experiments without engineering tickets — designed to evolve.

LIVE PREVIEW
Apple Pay
PayPal
Credit card
Impact

What changed at checkout.

−34%
Friction at credit card entry
+22%
Checkout completion
3 wks
Time to ship a new offer (was 3 mo)
12+
Studios on one system
Reflection

What I would improve.

Invest earlier in shared tokens — visual debt compounds across studios.

Bring engineers into research from week one. Constraints sharpen design.

Treat the receipt screen as part of the product, not a goodbye.

CONTINUE THE SYSTEM →

Loyalty Program

Tiers, rewards and rituals — designed to make players feel seen, not segmented.