Wireframe: PayPal for iPad
As an iPad user, it's annoying to find an app that looks and works beautifully on smartphones but has not been optimized for tablet devices. When you open such an app on an iPad, for example, you get an iPhone-sized box in the center of your screen, surrounded by black to fill in the rest of the screen. It's extremely disappointing to see that from your favorite app on iPad's big screen.
The number of popular apps that are not optimized for tablets is surprising, especially those from major companies. Apps from the financial industry have been particularly slow to take advantage of a tablet's extra screen real estate.
In some cases, it makes sense. Cash App, for example, is designed for quick transactions that would probably take place on the phone. Perhaps its developer, Square, hasn't found enough reason to spend the money on tablet optimization.
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However, apps like PayPal serve greater functions than Cash App. You get the quick transactions, sure, but beyond that PayPal becomes a fairly robust banking app that handles personal and business transactions, monetary subscriptions, and transfers to and from other accounts and users. In some cases, PayPal can be a person's main money mangement tool. Its capabilities extend far past those of Cash App.
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When I installed PayPal on my iPad, I thought that surely such an app would be optimized. As you can see, I was wrong.
Optimized apps, apart from looking beautiful on a tablet's larger screen, can offer such impressive functionality and put everything you need right at your fingertips, even more so than a smartphone. Here is a wireframe I created to show what PayPal could look like on a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. I designed it using Adobe Comp on my own 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Please note, I did this on my own free time. PayPal did not ask or pay me to create this.
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The extra box in the top right hand corner labeled $350 would only appear on subsequent pages. The idea is that as you navigate through the app, you would be able to see manage your account balance with a single tap, without having to navigate back to the main dashboard seen here.
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A small amount of copy is shown in the box labeled Activity to better illustrate how PayPal's current layout could be brought to this design.
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There are a number of apps that I can't wait to see optimized for iPad. Even if it's not with my design pictured here, I hope that PayPal will eventually be one of them.