Fake payment app for a film: prepping the phone prop

A payment app prop earns its place when the story turns on money changing hands: rent paid at the last minute, a debt settled in a car park, a character checking the balance before making a decision. The phone is close to the lens, the actor has to use it, and the audience reads the screen in a second. This guide is for whoever prepares that phone — the props department on a bigger shoot, or the director who is also the props department on a short. The prop is Tender, Pozer’s Cash App-style payment app, installed on the phone the actor holds.

A prop stays on set

Everything here is about a screen the audience knows is fiction. A payment app is also the prop most likely to be lifted off a set and used for real: a payment screen shown to someone selling a sofa, a car or a pair of tickets, so that they hand it over. That isn’t a prop any more. Shown to a real person as a real payment, it’s fraud whichever tool drew it; it’s prohibited by our acceptable use policy, and accounts that do it are closed. Tender can’t send, receive or prove a payment. The audience is the only one it’s meant to convince.

Break the script into screen states

Go through the script and list every moment the phone is readable on camera, and what it has to say at each. Most payment scenes need three things: the balance before, the action, and the balance after. The before and after are figures you set. The action is performed live, because the keypad, the receipt and the new line in Activity are the part an actor can play.

Then do the arithmetic across the whole story, not just the scene. If the character has $1,240.18 in scene 3, pays $1,200 in rent in scene 4 and checks the balance in scene 11, the phone in scene 11 shows $40.18, less whatever else the script has them spend in between. An audience that sees a balance twice will subtract.

Decide what’s typed and what’s performed

Anything that changes during a take happens by tapping, and happens the same way every time: the balance moves by the amount typed — or by everything it holds, if that’s less — the receipt comes up, and a new line lands at the top of Activity. Anything that only has to be true when the scene starts is typed in advance — the balance, the savings, the paycheck row, the history in Activity. Savings, bitcoin and paychecks never move when someone taps, so a change to them between scenes is one you make yourself, in Edit, between setups.

The Edit panel opens on the figures you published, not on whatever the last take left behind. Changes saved there show straight away on the phone you made them on, replacing that phone’s take, so tomorrow’s figures can go onto the hero phone tonight. Publish from a computer instead and a phone holding an old take swaps it for the new version once it picks that up — don’t count on that being instant. The app’s name and icon are the exception to all of this: they’re fixed on the home screen at the moment the app is added.

Clear what’s on the phone

The design ships clean: an original layout with no real company’s name, logo or artwork, and nothing on the Money tab that names the app at all — the header carries only the character’s initials and tag. What you add is yours to clear, like anything else the art department puts in frame.

• The app’s name and icon. They sit on the home screen rather than inside the app, but a shot of the character opening it will catch them. Give the film’s fictional brand a name — the editor suggests Tender, Dime, Quid and Greenback — and an icon you made. A real payment company’s logo is against our acceptable use policy.
• The tag. It sits at the top right of the Money tab and takes up to 20 characters. A tag that belongs to a real person puts them in your film, and viewers look these things up. Make it plainly invented, or check it isn’t taken, for the same reason films use 555 numbers.
• The names in Activity. Invent them. A real name beside a payment says that person paid or was paid.
• The account and routing numbers. The fields hold four digits at most and show them masked, as Account ∗∗5430 and Routing ∗∗329. No complete number ever appears, so there’s nothing to clear.
• The accent colour. Match it to the icon you made, so the home screen and the app agree when a shot catches both.

Match the phone to the world of the film

• Currency. US dollars, pounds, euros or rupiah. Amounts are always written the American way, with commas for thousands and a point before the cents. £1,240.18 looks right in a British film, and €1,240.18 suits Dublin better than Berlin; a scene set in Jakarta shows Rp12,500,000.00, which isn’t how an Indonesian app would write it, so keep a rupiah balance out of the close-ups.
• Time. Every receipt is stamped Today at the phone’s own clock time, and every new Activity line reads Now. If the script sets the payment at two in the morning and you’re shooting at noon, keep the Date line soft or out of frame.
• How long money takes. Add money reads Standard · 1–3 days on its receipt but raises the balance at once. That’s fine in a montage. If the plot depends on money taking days to land, change the balance in Edit between scenes rather than tapping on camera.

What it can’t show

• A pending payment, or a refusal with money in the account. The one refusal the app shows is an empty balance: set Cash balance to 0, or let an earlier payment use it up, and the next Pay comes back Not sent, its circle holding a dash rather than a tick. A payment bigger than a balance that isn’t empty sends what the balance holds. For any other refusal, play it on the actor’s face, or cut before the tap.
• Money arriving from another phone. There are three actions — Add money, Pay and Withdraw — and each changes only the phone it’s tapped on. A second character’s phone showing the money land is a second app, prepared in advance; the money-sent scene guide shows how.
• Requests and bill splits. There’s no request button and no splitting screen. A split on screen is a Pay for part of the bill; if the reason has to be readable, type it as the Note of a prepared line in Activity.
• A receipt from another day. The Date line always reads Today. A flashback that needs an old payment can cut to Activity instead, where each line’s When is whatever you type.

On the day

• One app per character. If two characters’ phones are both on screen, publish two apps, each with its own tag, balance and history, and install each on its own phone. The simulator guide has the install steps.
• Rehearse the thumb. Let the actor run the payment a few times before you roll: the $ in the middle of the bottom bar, the To field above the keypad, the keys laid out 1 to 9 with the point bottom left and ⌫ bottom right, and the Pay button underneath. A thumb that knows where it’s going reads as someone who uses the app every day.
• Reset between takes. Every tap stays on the phone — rehearsal taps included — so a second take starts where the first one ended. Before each one, hold two fingers still on the screen until Edit appears, tap it, then Reset to published values.
• Background phones. A phone that’s only glimpsed, lying on a table or in someone else’s hand, can sit on the Money tab untouched, but it will lock itself halfway through a long take. Turn auto-lock off for the shoot, and back on afterwards.
• The mark. On the free tier the app shows a SIMULATED · POZER.COM mark, on its receipts as well. For a production that needs a clean screen, Pro at US$12.99/mo removes it.