<< GO BACKVisa Purchase Alerts
Turning card activity
into awareness and action.
STAFF DESIGNER · VISA
Product design, interaction design, prototyping, and cross-functional delivery.
2024 - Present
About This Project
Visa Purchase Alerts helps cardholders monitor transaction activity and manage how they receive alerts. I worked on expanding the existing service into a mobile experience, bringing alerts, preferences, and card controls into a more immediate and accessible experience.
The Opportunity
VPA already gave cardholders visibility into transaction activity through configurable alerts. Bringing the service to mobile created an opportunity to make that awareness more immediate and provide clearer paths from notification to understanding and action.
Key Drivers
Transactions Awareness
Help cardholders quickly understand when, where, and how their cards are being used.
Personalized Alerts
Give users control over which activity matters to them and how they want to be notified.
Card Controls
Connect awareness with actions that help cardholders respond to their card activity.
Understanding the Experience
From transaction activity to informed action
The experience follows a simple progression: card activity creates awareness, awareness builds understanding, and understanding helps cardholders decide when to act. Mapping this journey connected cardholder needs with the product capabilities required at each stage; from transaction monitoring and alerts to card controls and integrated services.
Designing across an integrated experience
The mobile product brought together app flows, Visa Transaction Controls (VTC) SDK capabilities, and integrated services within a single cardholder journey. Mapping the product architecture clarified how these systems connected across onboarding, core card management, and account settings.
It also revealed how transaction visibility and alerts could lead naturally to controls, assistance, and other cardholder actions.
High-level product architecture connecting onboarding, core card management, integrated services, and account settings.
Understanding cardholder needs
Drawing from the existing product experience and early research, we identified four cardholder needs across the journey. These needs helped define the information, controls, and guidance required at each stage.
Stay informed without effort
Relevant activity is monitored without constantly checking the account.
Understand activity quickly
Clear transaction context helps cardholders recognize what happened and whether it matters.
Control what deserves attention
Cardholders choose which activity matters and how they want to be notified.
Take action with confidence
Relevant controls and assistance are easy to access when attention is needed.
Validating the experience with cardholders
We partnered with Research to evaluate how cardholders completed, navigated, and understood key card-management tasks. The study helped identify usability barriers, validate terminology and interaction patterns, and assess whether cardholders understood system states and feedback.
Task-based usability testing
We used realistic card-management scenarios to evaluate whether cardholders could complete key tasks without guidance.
Secure the card
Your card is missing. What would you do?
Control transactions
How would you block online purchases?
Create an alert
How would you set an alert for purchases over $500?
Update account information
How would you update your phone number?
Navigation & information architecture
We evaluated how cardholders understood the app’s structure and where they expected to find key features.
Feature placement
Where would you expect to find card controls?
Card vs. account
Where would you look for settings related to a specific card?
Switching cards
How would you move between your cards?
Menu expectations
What would you expect to find in the app menu?
Labels & feature comprehension
We evaluated whether cardholders understood key labels, icons, and actions before interacting with them.
Card controls
What would you expect to manage here?
Set alerts
What do you think happens when you select this option?
Lock card
What would you expect to happen after locking your card?
Manage cards
What would you expect to find in this section?
Feedback & state comprehension
We evaluated whether cardholders could understand alert states and feel confident that their settings were applied.
Alert status
Can you tell which alerts are currently active?
Paused alerts
Can you identify which alerts are paused?
Notification channels
Can you tell how each alert will notify you?
Next steps
Is it clear how to update or resume an alert?
Turning research findings into design decisions
Findings helped us refine feature hierarchy, navigation, terminology, and system feedback across key card-management flows.
Making alert history easier to scan
We grouped alerts by time period and strengthened the visual hierarchy, making recent activity easier to scan and distinguish from older events.
Clarifying alert states and options
We separated active alerts from available options and surfaced descriptions directly in the list, helping cardholders understand their current settings and unfamiliar alert types before opening them.
Onboarding
A streamlined entry experience helps cardholders access the app, verify their identity, and get to their cards with minimal friction.
Card management
Core card-management flows give cardholders quick access to alerts, transaction controls, account settings, and other everyday card actions.
