Building Credit from 0 to 1

The Project

I worked as a Head of Design at Perpay to create a brand new credit card experience. The experience spanned start to finish from signup on the website, to getting the credit card in the mail, to spending and getting alerts, to payment and in-app UI. My responsibility was to create all designs and mocks that would allow the teams to create a best in class credit card experience, with a focus on payment and credit building.

Responsibilities

  • Product Design Lead

  • Experience Strategist

  • Branding Visuals and UI Lead

  • Researcher

  • Tools

    • Figma

    • Sprig

    • Jira

    • Asana

    • Notion

  • Team

    • 7 Engineers

    • 1 Product Manager

    • 2 Executive Stakeholders

    • 1 Data analyst

    • 1 Product Designer

    • 1 Lead Designer (me!)

  • Duration

    Concept: December 2021

    MVP: January -March 2022

  • Responsibilities

    • Product Design Lead

    • Experience Strategist

    • Branding Visuals and UI Lead

    • Researcher

Goal

Change customer payment behavior through product design

Customers with a credit score below 600 have no access to credit. To secure payment and allow access, Perpay syncs directly to a customer’s paycheck and extends credit via a traditional credit card. After several months of on time payments and low balances, the customer will see a credit score boost.

What are we solving?

Provide a non-traditional credit card experience that increases on time payments and positive repayment behaviors. Boost customers credit scores with each positive payment.

Who is this for?

Existing Perpay customers with low credit scores. People that have a hard time prioritizing a credit card bill in the past.

Constraints

Work within the existing Perpay app. Apply a new experience to an already-built ecommerce app.

the paycheck sync is via third party, and can not be changed.

Teach customers about a new payment method that is unfamiliar to them.

Customers have a finite budget for bills.

Process

  • Empathize and Research

    Learn about traditional and secured credit cards. Why can’t we pay off balances?

  • Analyze Market

    What possible solutions exist, and where do we fit within those markets and boundaries?

  • Design and IDeation

    What does good look like for us? How do we deliver a best in class experience to our customers. Blue Sky iterations.

  • Deliver MVP

    Work together with Product Management and Engineering to define solutions and paths to a slimmed down end to end launch version of credit card UI.

Simple Signup

  • Access to Credit

    No Credit Check, Increase Credit Score

    Easy first step phone number

    Survey of value props with ranking to understand most important steps

  • Confirm Info

    To be as streamlined as possible,

    Current users would only have to accept terms and confirm current information

Research Highlights

What I learned upfront before designing

Past Credit Card Use

Customers commonly noted they had a tough time repaying credit card balances in the past. Though they know interest accrues and this impacts your credit score, other bills came up.

90% of non borrowers have had a credit card in the past

  • 29% had a Capital One card in the past

  • 12% had American Express cards

  • 9% had Discover card

Struggles and Life Challenges

A lot of customer debts were unexpected. Medical bills and Divorce are the most common disruptors for the customer’s credit journey.

Customers have had credit impacted by Medical bills, divorce, and having ‘no credit’. Positive past experiences were commonly linked to credit limit increases.

Design Requirements:

  • Require a payment from customer paychecks at signup

  • Emphasize access to credit and not credit check

  • Be upfront about what helps credit scores

  • Encourage customers to pay off full balances

62% of customers ranked the experience 10/10, with no rankings below 8/10

Customer Survey

“Better than almost any credit card application I’ve ever used.”

Payment Setup

  • Access to Credit

    No Credit Check, Increase Credit Score

    Easy first step phone number

    Survey of value props with ranking to understand most important steps

  • Utilization and Education

    Teach users that low utilization is desirable

    Motivate users with payment streak notifications

    Transparency in paycheck connections

Features and Solutions

A signup and dashboard experience to promote on-time payments

 

Themes

  • This will be the only credit card you’ve ever been able to pay off

  • Payment works differently - Sign up knowing payment is handled by your paycheck. Required recurring payments on signup and beyond

  • No credit check means you can access this product and you qualify for it

  • Credit building will happen, we handle it for you

User Stories

  • I want to be able to pay over time anywhere, for any purchase

  • I want to signup and get my card fast

  • I want to know how much I can spend and where I can use the card

  • I want to have affordable and consistent payments that automatically draft for me

  • I want to know how this impacts my credit score

Dashboard and Use

  • Rewards for Payment

    Reward users for payments

    Offer higher credit limits

    Exciting UI with animated moment

  • Credit History

    Show Credit Score Improvements

    Celebrate positive gains with a highlight

    Encourage further credit boosting activity

Prioritizing features

Using card sorting and theme workshopping to decide what user stories were most critical to accomplishing payment behavior changes.

Competitors

Analyzing experiences of credit card, bank, fintech, and payment app.

Looking primarily at dashboards, sign up flows, and payment flows.

Design Iterations

Prototype Findings

Positive rankings on signup flow experience and look and feel

Customer quotes

“Better than almost any credit card application I’ve ever used.”

“Awesome job guys can’t wait to apply”

“It seemed very user friendly. I would say it was very well put together”

Survey Feedback

Why would you sign up for this card?

‘No Credit Check’’ is a clear winner in motivators

  • ‘$500 Credit Limit’ and ‘10 monthly subscription’ are not compelling, but the low monthly fee is not seen as a detractor, just an insignificant detail

  • Common theme is the $500 is not enough

  • Credit limit increases are by far the highest valued item in ‘what did you like about your past credit card’

Customer prototype feedback for dashboard

Education

Teach users that paycheck connection is the most important mechanism that will unlock access and get them started building better habits

Use friendly UI bottom sheets with sliders, offering optional deep dive content

Delighters

Encourage users to come back to use their rewards, credit score boosts, and see positive payment history.

Congratulate users on successful behaviors, and celebrate with them.

Next Steps and Learnings

Takeaways

Not all credit card functionality is necessary in a UI beyond transaction history

Showing progress and motivating towards next steps is more important to the product and behavior than other credit card features

Users will do their best to pay off debts, but they have a set amount of budget for credit payments

Past payment doesn’t predict future payment

Users preferred a premium looking product to that of an educational or playful aesthetic