Behind the scenes of Project Pratima, an effort to design a unified payments icon library for India

As the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) points out in its Payments Vision 2025 document, ‘digital payments are not simply about technology. For consumers, adoption of digital payment depends upon their lifestyle and how comfortable they are transacting digitally/online.” As India moves towards a “less-card, less-cash society”, the RBI is pushing for numerous measures to make e-payments accessible, trustworthy, safe and secure for every user.

Project Pratima is a one-of-its-kind initiative by the Payments Council of India (PCI) that aims to simplify the user experience of digital payments through the creation of a standardised icons library for all financial institutions in India. Pratima means image or representation in Sanskrit.

Here is a closer look at how this design project was conceived and executed.

Why an icons library?

Signage is a great equaliser. Irrespective of our age, education or social background, we are able to understand universal signs like No Parking, Toilets, Fire Exit, etc. Icons are the signage of the digital world, yet in the world of digital payments, they are not standardised.

Take a simple UPI action: send money to contacts. PhonePe depicts this with an icon shaped like a person whereas Google Pay uses an icon in the form of a phonebook. If you want to transfer money to yourself on PhonePe, you tap the icon shaped like a downward-pointing circular arrow. On Google Pay, the corresponding icon is a human figure with an arrow inside.

There are also differences in nomenclature: ‘Send money’ on one app means the same as ‘Money transfer’ on another. While consulting for a payments app in 2021, I remember being asked to write an action for UPI payments without using the words “Money transfer”, “Send money” or “UPI”. Why? Because the brand wanted to stand out from terminology already used by competitors!

If all payment apps follow a unified icon scheme, they can democratise user experience, allowing everyone, irrespective of their social or educational background, to use these apps with confidence. “A key objective of Project Pratima is to safeguard people against fraud and increase the adoption of digital payments. Standardised icons will help users identify payments actions correctly,” says Gaurav Chopra, executive director of PCI.

Defining the scope

In mid-2021, PCI invited a working group of around 30 design, user research, and business practitioners from India’s leading payment players including Paytm, Amazon Pay, Fampay, Setu, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India and others to ideate on the project. From this, a core group of volunteers was formed.

The scope for Phase 1 was limited to P2P/P2M payments, leaving categories like bill payments and insurance for a later stage. Based on data from the participating organisations, a set of 12 common use cases that would address about 80 percent of user interactions was shortlisted. This included the actions Send money, Receive money, Bank transfer, Pay to UPI ID, Pay to self, Pay to contact, Scan QR, See transaction history and Check balance, and the payment status messages Success, Failure and Pending.

Setting design principles 

Next, the core group established a set of four values or principles that would guide them in designing the icons. According to these principles, all payment icons must be:

• Recognisable: easy to understand and unlikely to be misunderstood even without accompanying labels


• Accessible: simple, uncluttered and sans pose barriers to those with situational disabilities or limited internet speed/bandwidth.


• Scalable: readable at all sizes, easily reproduced and optimised for low-end devices


• Flexible: customisable for different brands, contexts, languages, etc., without losing integrity

What visuals would best represent each of the 12 use cases? The conventional approach to such a problem would be linear: start with user research and based on the insights, arrive at a design system. But given the nature and scale of the project, this was not practical.

“If you were asked what an ideal icon for the menu on your phone is, you might suggest a book; someone else might suggest a list or a question mark. None of these options is wrong but it is impossible to find a user-sourced answer that aligns with the mental model of 1.4 billion people,” says Kalpitha Jagadeesh, ex-user researcher at Setu and part of the core group.

Instead, the team chose to apply their collective experience to design first and then validate with users. “We explored various metaphors representing each action. For example, ‘Check balance’ can be indicated by a money bag, a piggybank, a search loupe with the rupee symbol, or a gullak (the Indian version of a piggybank). We sketched out various options for each of the use cases,” say Fatema Raja of Fampay and Vikas Singh of Paytm, designers who are part of the core group.

These metaphors were put to test through an anonymous dot-voting survey within the working group. Every participant ranked the metaphors based on how effectively they represented the associated action. The metaphors that ranked highest were crafted into digital icons adhering to the project’s design principles as well as established human-centric design guidelines from Apple, Google and IBM.

Seeking user validation

Neha Shrimali, design lead at Amazon Pay, led the user testing effort for the shortlisted icons. She says, “The main goal was to get validation for the icons from actual users and weed out those representations that were poorly or incorrectly communicating the action.”

The team created a survey that showcased each icon and asked users to describe what they thought it meant. The survey included both aided (with clues or context) and unaided (no prompts or supporting text) questions. HDFC Bank, a participant in Project Pratima, helped the team reach users from Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities through its network. Around 400 responses were received, based on which the icons were refined. After inputs from the RBI team, a further round of revision was made.

Publishing the library

The icons library is published online using a framework called Fictoan, which enables easy handoff between designers and tech teams. Every icon is accompanied by a brief note explaining the design, usage recommendations, do’s and don’ts where relevant, and helpful label suggestions.

“While the icons have been standardised, the goal is not to be restrictive. Icons depict actions or messages but are also used by brands as a communication asset. We’ve left room for brands to apply their own colours and styles to the icons, within the guidelines provided,” says Singh of Paytm.

Project Pratima: What next?

Currently, it is not mandatory for payment players to implement the standardised icons within their apps but the RBI is expected to issue guidelines to this effect. PCI’s Chopra explains that the next step is to drive adoption of these icons by running awareness campaigns and reiterating the designs to increase familiarity. Usability testing is just as important, add the designers.

“Once the icons are rolled out to actual app interfaces, we will get user feedback at scale,” says Neha Shrimali. “In addition to a large, diverse user base, we also need in-depth feedback through one-to-one conversations and focus group discussions to evaluate and refine the icons.”

Points out Rajashree Gopalakrishnan, ex-Amazon Pay and part of the core group, “Is it possible to create a set of icons that are relatable to and representative of billions of users from all over India? Project Pratima is a piloting effort that explores the possibilities. It is important to look at what it can be rather than what it currently is.”

Vivek G, UX designer at Setu, agrees. “Apart from the obvious advantages to users, Project Pratima is an example of social collaboration among the fintech community and regulators. We have established a baseline for good design that will give new payment players a good starting point. Even a small rural bank that may not have design or UX expertise can now follow these standards for a new app or interface.”

PCI’s plans for phase 2 of the project include designing for accessibility. Says Chopra, “We are exploring the possibility of adding standardised audio tunes to accompany every payment action. This will help users with partial visual disability navigate digital payments with confidence.”