CASE STUDY

EPAP: Germany’s Leading expense tracker solution

Client :

EPAP GmbH

Client & Project Background Information

EPAP is Germany’s #1 receipt digitalisation and expense-tracking app, topping the iOS finance charts with a 4.5★ rating. The app empowers users with OCR-powered instant receipt capture, insightful household-budget analytics, and incentivises users by rewarding anonymised data sharing. Rapid growth had, however, cluttered its core user value behind an overwhelming array of features, causing confusion around its primary function and usability. To reinforce market leadership, EPAP partnered with us to streamline its offering, enhance user experience, optimize operational costs, and prepare for European expansion.

The Challenge

The EPAP project presented multiple, interconnected challenges:

  • Feature Overload & Positioning: Rapid growth had diluted EPAP’s clear value proposition, confusing users about whether the app was primarily a receipt vault, an expense tracker, or both.
  • Usability Issues: A complex onboarding process and dense UI led to high drop-off rates during early app interactions.
  • High Infrastructure Costs: A Firebase-only architecture triggered unsustainable cloud expenses due to inefficient processes.
  • OCR Performance: Variable quality of German retail receipts exposed gaps in text detection accuracy, requiring significant OCR improvements.
  • Security & Compliance: Crowdsourced data posed risks of fraud and regulatory compliance issues, particularly around GDPR.

Our Contribution

We provided a comprehensive, end-to-end solution addressing EPAP’s challenges, enhancing their product, infrastructure, and overall strategy:

  1. User Research & Strategic Positioning:
    • Conducted stakeholder interviews and user diary studies.
    • Redefined product messaging clearly as a “smart receipt vault & spending coach.”
  2. UX & Usability Redesign:
    • Heat-map analysis identified underperforming UI elements.
    • Redesigned the Flutter front-end using an atomic design approach, significantly simplifying onboarding with progressive no-sign-up access.
    • Introduced gamification to increase daily engagement.
  3. Cloud Infrastructure Optimization:
    • Analyzed and optimized cloud operations by transitioning resource-intensive tasks to Cloud Run and batching database writes.
    • Achieved an 82% reduction in monthly cloud costs without compromising service quality.
  4. Advanced OCR and Data Improvements:
    • Implemented ONNX-optimized OCR models with an active-learning feedback loop for continuous improvement.
    • Significantly raised text detection accuracy to supermarket-grade standards.
  5. Fraud Prevention & GDPR Compliance:
    • Integrated robust hybrid machine learning and rule-based fraud detection.
    • Automated GDPR-compliant workflows ensuring rigorous data protection and user privacy.
  6. Growth & Agile Development:
    • Adopted agile feature-flag rollouts and canary releases ensuring zero downtime during critical updates.
    • Set foundations for strategic expansion into municipal QR-receipt pilot projects and AI-driven financial insights.

Achievements

The results of our collaboration have dramatically reshaped EPAP, driving measurable outcomes:

  • Cost Efficiency: Reduced cloud infrastructure expenses by 82% month-over-month, significantly boosting operational efficiency.
  • Enhanced User Experience: Halved time-to-first-value for new users through radical UX simplification, drastically lowering early user churn.
  • OCR Excellence: Elevated OCR accuracy, achieving reliability suitable for diverse retail receipt scenarios, opening avenues for monetization.
  • Robust Security: Implemented stringent fraud prevention and compliance protocols to secure user data and foster trust.
  • Strategic Roadmap: Enabled EPAP to confidently prepare for European market expansion and compliance with evolving e-receipt regulations.

Conclusion 

Our strategic collaboration transformed EPAP into a streamlined, intuitive solution, unlocking substantial operational savings, enhancing user experience, and elevating data accuracy to retail standards. EPAP now stands as a faster, smarter, and more scalable platform, ready to set the benchmark for digital receipts and personal finance across Europe. The client praised our deep engagement and proactive approach, recognizing our commitment as genuine partners invested in their long-term success.