Empowering retail merchants beyond payments

Empowering retail merchants with business bank accounts and beyond

Date

2023
Client

Hydrogen
Role

Product design, UX research

Business merchants frequently encountered slow bank transfers and confirmations, which significantly impacted their inflow. When customers made payments via mobile bank transfer, it could take several minutes (or even hours) for the merchant to receive confirmation. This delay often affected business growth, as merchants could not confirm payments in real-time, leading to frustration for both merchants and customers. As a result, many merchants had to rely solely on cash or card payments or risk losing the sale altogether.
Furthermore, merchants who had sales reps often faced additional issues with trust and financial transparency. In situations where the merchant was not physically present, they had no way of verifying if payments were received or accurately recorded, giving room for dishonest store reps to mismanage or steal funds.

InstantPay was designed to help merchants with branded business virtual accounts, instant real time notifications, sales rep and location management.

I owned the end-to-end design process for InstantPay from user research to completion, ensuring that we delivered a product that solved critical pain points for merchants in a way that was intuitive and enjoyable to use

Due to a signed non-disclosure agreement (NDA), I am unable to disclose certain details as they would reveal company intellectual property and internal processes. This case study highlights the overall design challenges and solutions without revealing proprietary information

The Plot

We noticed two recurring issues from our research:

Slow Bank Transfers: Many merchants were frustrated by how long it took for bank transfers to be confirmed. In many cases, the payment confirmation didn’t come through right away, leaving them unsure if the transaction was successful. This led to hesitancy in accepting bank transfers and forced them to rely mostly on cash or card payments.
Store Rep Accountability: Merchants also had trouble managing their store reps. Without the merchant present, reps had to call the merchant to confirm every payment. And in some cases, store reps were dishonest, taking advantage of the lack of transparency to mismanage funds.

We knew that solving these two issues would greatly improve the way merchants operate, so we got to work.

A better way

Data from our user research allowed us to work with specific goals. We wanted create a solution that would enable merchants to

Create and manage multiple virtual business bank accounts for different point of sales and users
Accept bank transfer payments and get real-time notifications, ensuring that they can confirm transactions without delays.
Monitor all staff activities and track payment activities by individual staff members in real-time, ensuring accountability and transparency
Oversee multiple business locations from one platform, providing merchants with full visibility into payment transactions across all stores, regardless of location

I also did some benchmarking analysis to compare our offering with current market solutions and alternatives so I could better adopt improvements that fit our overall approach and goals.

The outcome

We developed InstantPay as a standalone product to quickly address the urgent needs of merchants. After successful adoption, the company decided to integrate InstantPay into its omniportal, alongside other products, allowing merchants to access the full range of HydrogenPay’s services in one seamless platform.

Virtual business bank accounts in seconds

Merchants can generate multiple virtual bank accounts on the InstantPay platform. These accounts can be used as a standalone account or assigned to users and locations. However, all transactions are under the merchant’s control, with same day or next day settlements, depending on the settlement cycle

Independent accounts for store representatives

Merchants can easily assign and unassign virtual accounts to users, giving them the ability to accept payments independently

User Management

Before store reps can be assigned accounts, they would have been added to the merchant’s business. InstantPay allows merchants to manage their sales representatives by creating an account for them on the platform

When necessary, merchants can also disable or enable users and ensure full control over who can collect payments at any given time.

Location Management

For merchants with multiple locations, InstantPay provides a comprehensive location management module. Merchants can assign specific store reps to different locations, monitor payments for each location, and enable or disable locations as needed. The platform’s dashboard allows merchants to have a clear, consolidated view of all locations.