Paycada

Designing a fintech web platform: automated invoice-chasing for businesses

Industry:

Finance / Fintech

Year:

2020-2024

Team:

1 x Product Designer

1 x Business Analyst

1 x Project Manager

1 x Programme Director

3 x Marketing Teams

Contributions:

Product Design

User Interface

Marketing Digital Assets

Marketing Print Assets

Designing smarter automated invoice-chasing

Project Overview

Client Website

Paycada is a fintech web app owned by Fignum, a leading developer of cloud-based software solutions for the financial sector in the UK. It specialises in digital payment processing and technology that powers automated lending decisions, from mortgages and loans to car finance.

Fignum is part of Bluestone, which offers financial services such as credit management, credit control, specialist lending, capital management and direct debt recovery.

Fignum approached Tappable in 2020 to provide creative and strategic direction in bringing Paycada to life: a new fintech product that automatically chases overdue invoices for businesses and offers easy payment solutions for debtors.

I was tasked with this project from the beginning, and 3 years later, as the lead designer on Paycada and brand guardian, I created various design assets from product to marketing and print to marketing websites:

- Brand pack

- A web app

- Digital assets

- Marketing materials

- E-books and other printed material

- Landing pages

- Websites

App Features

Paycada was developed as an add-on tool with multiple communication channels, analytics and reporting tools for customers. It was designed to integrate seamlessly with other invoicing software solutions, mainly Xero. It’s packed full of powerful features with the following offerings:

Automated collection of invoices

Automated multi-channel communications platform

Automated communication with debtors

An extension to existing finance software

Easy-to-use payment portal (card, direct debit)

Escalation to debt collection services

Self-service, cloud-based, easy to set up

Management of customers

Management of users

Company branding customisation

Invoice collection analytics

Branding

Automated collection of invoices

Branding

Automated communication with debtors

Branding

Invoice collection and communications analytics

Branding

Easy-to-use payment portal (Stripe integration)

Branding

Organisation branding customisation

Branding

Escalation to debt collection services

Branding

Self-service, cloud-based, easy to set up

Branding

Management of customers and users

Designing a complex financial platform

The Challenges

From the beginning, it became clear that Paycada was no ordinary project, requiring multiple design solutions, digital assets and a tight set of requirements, to produce them all.

After a deep analysis of the product requirements, Tappable have constructed a thorough product plan and vision, from branding and product design to launch. For this to happen, a few things had to be considered:

Challenge #1

Branding

Creating a brand that stands out and appeals to businesses of all sizes.

Challenge #2

Web App

Designing a complex finance product without sacrificing UX.

Challenge #3

Website

Designing, developing and launching a website for a product still in development.

Challenge #4

Marketing

Designing marketing materials for various audiences and marketing channels.

The Solutions

All teams involved working on Paycada have contributed greatly on solving the pain points of designing, creating and launching a product of such scale.

Through proper requirements identification, user journeys and flows, design iteration, testing, marketing and innovation, Paycada was launched in late 2022 and it continues to grow today.

Solution #1

#1

Creating a brand that stands out and appeals to businesses of all sizes

Creating a brand for Paycada was kickstarted by understanding the market and its competitors and coming in with a new offering that appeals to small businesses.

Based on user research, competitor analysis, and audience personas, we created a brand that customers could trust.

Solution #2

#2

Designing a complex product without sacrificing UX

The truth is, nobody likes to be chased for money they owe and not a lot of employees love doing it either. My role as a product designer was to consider the technical scope and complexities of the entire platform, ensuring and advocating for an excellent user experience.

By employing a holistic design approach across all parts of the app, the ultimate goal of the platform was to offer enhanced ease of use for customers to automate their invoice chasing.

The web app needed to have:

An easy-to-use customer payment portal

Debtors should be able to follow a payment link from their email, mobile notification or text message and pay any overdue invoices in an easy to use payment portal.

An easy self-service onboarding

Customers should be able to sign up to Paycada and go trough the onboarding process easily without friction and multi-step processes.

Customer analytics

Customers of Paycada should be able to view open invoices, paid invoices, overdue invoices, past and upcoming actions and communications sent.

User management

Customers of Paycada should be able to maintain organisations with multiple users and be able to add and delete users on the platform.

Payments and refunds

Customers of Paycada should be able to view payments to the platform and ask for refunds if they so wish.

Solution #3

#3

Creating a website for a product still in development

Early on in my relationship with Paycada as a product designer, I was tasked with creating the Paycada website, from initial ideas and wireframes to visual designs and finally developing the website in Webflow.

I explored many different graphics, layouts and styles and the website has had several transformations over the last 3 years and many concepts and digital assets were created for it.

Solution #4

#4

Designing digital assets for various audiences and marketing channels

Understanding Paycada’s audiences, public target and marketing goals, allowed us to have a more precise profile of the motivations and interests of Paycada’s users and how they would interact with the platform.

During my time working on this project, I created countless marketing campaign assets for both digital and print.

User Journeys

While designing the Paycada app, we created detailed user flows and journeys for each new section of the app in Whimsical, to evaluate the customers’ precise steps and to understand how we could simplify their journey to help them achieve their most important goals with the product.

During the process, my team and I went through each area of the app, sometimes multiple times and assessed where opportunity lies to reduce steps, as well as iterating on how the user experience can be optimised for customers.

This also helped greatly in creating detailed UI screens later on in the design process.

Wireframes

At the beginning of the ideation and design process, we created low-res wireframes to model the general flow of user navigation. These served the team to quickly asses what features and layouts we should adopt on the screen.

After discussing the features and layouts of each section of the app, I then built high-fidelity wireframes for our multiple stakeholders, including the development team. They needed to have a near-finalised version of the app, so they could evaluate and test with the user, outside of Tappable. All of these wireframes were created in Sketch.

Later steps included iterating over the UI experience to optimise functionality and reduce unnecessary UI elements to the wireframes.

Personal Insights

Paycada is the most technically complex product design project I’ve worked on and it continues to be so to this day. It has allowed me to gain solid knowledge and understanding of the research, marketing and development strategy that is needed to launch a product of such scale.

Moreover, it was great to be part of a highly talented team that was committed to taking a product from its first stage of development to launch.

Ultimately, it made me a better product designer and taught me a great number of skills: creating and managing design systems, creating and managing consistent UI components, as well as creating an information architecture that supports the technical complexities of the platform.

Paycada

Industry:

Year:

Team:

Contributions:

Designing smarter automated invoice-chasing

Project Overview

Client Website

App Features

Designing a complex financial platform

The Challenges

Challenge #1

Branding

Challenge #2

Web App

Challenge #3

Website

Challenge #4

Marketing

The Solutions

Solution #1

Solution #1

#1

Creating a brand that stands out and appeals to businesses of all sizes

Solution #2

Solution #2

#2

Designing a complex product without sacrificing UX

The web app needed to have:

Solution #3

Solution #3

#3

Creating a website for a product still in development

Solution #4

Solution #4

#4

Designing digital assets for various audiences and marketing channels

Product Roadmap

User Journeys

Wireframes

Final Designs

Deliverables

Personal Insights

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