Customers were being asked to pay before they felt confident enough to do so.
Without a clear opportunity to verify the payment, many hesitated or abandoned the transaction altogether.
Omantel | CEP Super App | Act 1
Redesigning Telco Bill Payment for a Super App
The redesign that became the foundation for Omantel’s Super App.
95screens to pay a bill, a 44% reduction
41payment journeys to maintain, down 75%
7new features added where there were none
42levels of navigation depth, halved
Bill payment is the highest-frequency, highest-stakes interaction in the telco relationship. It is the moment where trust is either built or broken.
01
The work
Before we dive into the details, these are some of the main screens in the hands of our users today.
02
The Problem: What the data told us
To understand how customers actually interact with billing, we ran usability testing using a think-aloud qualitative method across key Omantel customer segments. We discovered the problem wasn't just usability. It was confidence.
Participants completed real payment tasks while verbalising their thoughts, which let the team identify friction points and mental-model mismatches rather than opinions.
Segments prioritised
Digital Natives
Prominent Omanis
Both groups represent significant portions of the user base and sit at opposite ends of comfort with digital payments.
Three findings that shaped everything
Users thought in phone numbers. The system thought in account numbers.
People manage multiple lines by person, not by account. Autopay belonged in settings, not Quick Actions. Every navigation decision had been made for the system, not the user.
High-value customers were the quickest to abandon self-service.
Prominent Omanis, the highest-value segment. Status labels were incomprehensible, security cues absent, OTP-less Quick Pay felt like a vulnerability. Every friction point here is a call centre cost and a churn risk.
03
Principles behind our decisions
Every design decision had to satisfy four principles tied directly to trust, adoption, and retention outcomes.
Trust before action
Users must understand a charge before committing to it. Every payment interaction increases transparency before action.
Speak the customer's language
Information architecture follows user mental models, grouping bills by phone number rather than internal account structures.
Control reduces anxiety
Giving users control over payment behaviour reduces anxiety and increases adoption.
Proactive over reactive
The platform should surface risks early, helping users act before problems become support calls.
The bill, before the ask
Your bill. Before your confirmation.
1
2
3
Two bills, one payment
A mobile bill and a home line sit in one list under one total, instead of being paid one at a time.
See what you owe first
Each bill shows the month, the amount, and a copy of the invoice. You confirm after that, not before.
Edit the total before you pay
The amount adds up as you tick bills, and you can still change it at the last step.
The user shouldn't have to know what an account number is.
Bills are now grouped by the identifier users actually know: their phone number. The hierarchy shows what you owe, why, and when, in that order. No codes, no backend jargon surfacing in the UI.
This required a data architecture change. Engineering pushed back. I drove the conversation with user evidence, not design preference, and it shipped.
Phone number navigationJTBD mappingEngineering alignment
Set it once. Sleep through the due date.
Autopay adoption was the highest-value retention lever. But it required trust the previous flow hadn't earned. Users who feel exposed don't opt in, they call the contact centre instead.
The redesign gives each phone number its own toggle, spending cap and schedule. Control was the trust mechanism. When people feel in control, they commit.
Per-number autopaySpending capsFlexible scheduling
Suspension shouldn't arrive as a surprise.
Pre-suspension warnings and minimum payment alerts now surface before a crisis, not during one. The moment of panic becomes a moment of action. The user acts early. The contact centre stays quiet.
Proactive design isn't a feature, it's a signal that the platform understands what the user needs before they know they need it. That's the distance between a utility app and a trusted platform.
Proactive alertsMinimum paymentCall deflection
04
Designing the solution
The billing experience was rebuilt across three layers, discoverability architecture, billing information architecture, and the payment interaction model.
Discoverability architecture
Billing became accessible wherever users naturally expected it:
- Home screen Quick Pay
- Home screen AutoPay
- ProfilePayments
- Account level actions
- Contextual plan prompts
Bills organised around the way people think
Bills were restructured around phone numbers rather than account numbers. Information hierarchy prioritised:
- Account status
- Total due
- Payment deadline
- Service breakdown
- Invoice details
This removed a major cognitive barrier for multi-line customers.
Trust-driven payment model
Quick Pay was redesigned to balance speed with confidence. Key additions:
- Payment confirmation layer
- Transaction breakdowns
- Account-specific status indicators
- Dedicated success and error states
Control and automation
Autopay became configurable per phone number. Users can:
- Set spending limits
- Choose payment dates
- Manage active plans
- Adjust payment amounts
Control became the mechanism for trust and adoption.
Scalable payment pattern
A single payment framework was established across services. Included:
- Accessibility improvements
- Standardised interaction model
- Reusable payment flow
- Consistent visual hierarchy
This created a foundation reusable across future super app services.
05
Quantified impact
Before7–9screens
After5screens
↓ 44% fewer screens
Before4journeys
After1journey
↓ 75% fewer journeys
Before0features
After7features
↑ 7 new features added
Before3–4levels
After1–2levels
↓ 50% less depth
Note: screen counts based on flow analysis of Figma journeys. Feature count reflects new sections added vs. existing.
5
bill payment entry points introduced across the super app surface: home, settings, post-plan, profile, account.
7/10
design quality benchmark set at CCO level. Every screen reviewed against this bar before handoff.
10
design decisions, each traceable to a specific user research finding. Nothing shipped on assumption.
06
How I led this
Strategic oversight and design leadership across three interconnected workstreams, simultaneously.
- Research strategy Designed the research approach that uncovered why customers hesitated at the point of payment and where trust broke down.
- Evidence-led decisions Used customer research to align stakeholders, validate priorities and guide every major design decision.
- Defining the MVP Partnered with product teams to prioritise the highest-impact improvements and separate MVP from backlog.
- Aligning product and engineering Led the shift from account-based to phone-number-based billing using customer evidence to challenge existing assumptions.
- Challenging business constraints Surfaced customer-business trade-offs and helped prioritise policy-related improvements on the roadmap.
- Quality governance Established the design principles, success criteria and review standards that governed every payment experience delivered within scope, ensuring consistency across teams and releases.
This wasn't a payment flow redesign. It was proof that in a super app, every billing moment is a trust moment.
Trust isn't a UX metric. It's the foundation of retention. This redesign established the experience standard for future payment journeys across the super app.