Beta Release

The OnTheMonee App is the employee facing support product for the OnTheMonee Venue Portal. This is where employees can receive and access their tips via an OnTheMonee digital Mastercard. They also have access to additional rewards and discounts simply for being an OnTheMonee member. The initial product release focus on the essential features that eased employee of hospitality venues pain points and delivered the most value. (For more on this see OnTheMonee Portal)

The problem

Tips are considered extremely important across all businesses we spoke to, however the process of paying tips is quite demanding. Most venues pay their staff in cash. This means (especially for larger, multi venue restaurant groups) physically withdrawing very large sums of money from a bank, then dividing and distributing them to staff which is inherently risky. Secondly it is very time consuming. On average venue managers we spoke to said it takes them 4-5 hours to complete the task of ‘enveloping’ which involves manually calculating, dividing and placing cash into envelopes for each staff member. For employees this means sometimes tips are distributed weeks after they are due because managers are time poor. Employees have to collect their tips in person, even if they are not scheduled for work that day.

Solution for Employees

The digital Mastercard allows employees to focus on making money, no more cash handling or exchange.

The OnTheMonee product eco system allows employees to receive their tips quicker by allowing managers to automate tip calculations and pay them out in real-time at a regular cadence. Staff retention and engagement is also very important for venues with a high percentage of casual workers. The OnTheMonee rewards offering helps to enhance staff engagement and drives their tip dollars further.

Considerations

Creating a card costs money, therefore the app is only accessible to employees of OnTheMonee partners. This is done by using a mobile number check in the OnTheMonee backend. Employees are invited to the app via SMS when they are added in the portal.

Creating a Mastercard requires a lot of information such as full name, date of birth, address and phone number. In order to speed up the onboarding process, the majority of this information was decided to be pre-filled via the OnTheMonee Portal when employees are added by venues. This will creates a much quicker account creation experience in the app.

The MVP release simply included the card and associated functionality, basic app controls and rewards.

User Flows

Planning the app structure.

Launch Phase Wireframes

Initial wireframes were developed and presented across the wider product team as well as key stakeholders to make sure we were all aligned with the new vision for the app. These were then handed over to Prodigy+ agency for the UI Design.

OnTheMonee Member Onboarding

When an employee is added to the OnTheMonee Portal an SMS invite to create an account in the app is sent. From here they will begin onboarding and completing card creation. The process is outlined below:

Member receives SMS invite from OnTheMonee stating their employeer has invited them.
A splash screen with informative information (optional to swipe through)
Verification of their mobile number. A Check is also run to see if this number exists in the portal. If the mobile number has not been added then the user will receive a message that the app is unavailable to them (see last screen)
Password creation
Date of birth - Is required to create the card, However this is optional to enter in the portal. If it has not been entered, the app will prompt the user to confirm this.
Set up biometric login (optional)
Card is created and the member is prompted to add to wallet (Google Pay or Apple Pay)
Confirmation Screen

Dashboard

The home dashboard is OnTheMonee’s hero screen that members will always see as their first entry point into the product. The dashboard also acts as the primary point of interaction within the app, hence the experience of the dashboard is of high importance.

In app key notification events – i.e. new employer added.
Balance widget that shows current balance, most recent transaction/s (TBD on limit here either 1-3).
A tip countdown timer to the next tip run. (we know this by calculating the next pay run in the OnTheMonee Portal)
A rewards promotional tile
Each dashboard widget will have a set of controls that can be accessed via clicking the kebab icon that update the widget according to these view preferences, this will enable members to control what they see on the page.

Wallet

Members can view their balance and card usage, this encompases on the Activity tab which will show the current balance at top and transactions list below sorted in most recent order.

The transactions list will load on scroll (lazy load or similar).
When selecting a transaction record by click the transaction tile a member can navigate through to a details page which shows all pertinent information about the transaction.
Searching transactions uses string search across recent transactions

This work package focuses on the integration of the EML SDK allows members to:

Add card to a digital wallet (Google Pay or Apple Pay)
View card details
Card controls (accessible from profile navigation point

Rewards & Profile

Rewards: The rewards feature includes a small list of partners offering a discount in return for using the card within their premises. These partners can be promoted within theRewards tab. The cumulative savings from discounts is also available from the dashboard.

Profile: The Profile tab encompasses everything to do with members managing their account, card and core workplace settings. This will include:

OnTheMonee Card - view/manage card and add to wallet functionality
Employers - view employers and send invite to new employer which will drive an EDM to employer and confirmation of send to the OnTheMonee sales team.
My Account - View and update account details including update of phone number and password credentials as well as delete account.
Basic App Settings - security and login settings (biometrics), notifications and compliance content.
Help - Zendesk support integration
Log out - The ability to log out of the app and return to the home screen (unauthenticated).

UI Design (Prodigy +), Production readiness & Beta Release

Prodigy+ completed the UI based on the provided wireframes. I was the key sign-off on the final designs which would be provided to external developers.

I then prepared everything for production and handover to OnTheMonee’s App developers. This included providing technical documentation, product overview, writing Jira tickets and subsequently testing during development phase and release preparations.

The OnTheMonee app was released in tandem with the OnTheMonee portal in a closed beta phase with 10 restaurant venues for two months. In this time feedback on the experience was gathered, bugs fixed and the product was assessed for wider release.

Enhancements & Official Launch

During the beta phase feedback was obtained from users via interviews with OnTheMonee Partners (Venue Portal), user surveys as well as by monitoring the OnTHeMonee App help desk and collating any consistent/regular issues that were coming through. Most of the feedback was small usability fixes, however the one standout piece was that users who had particularly high tip amounts wanted to be able to transfer funds into a bank account. Currently OnTheMonee’s card issuer does not support this functionality, so OnTheMonee built their own.

The App was officially released in February 2024 alongside the venue portal. User engagement is consistently high, particularly around tip run time. Users of the app value the discounts but would like more variety such as travel.