Team :

Was comprised of approximately 75 people including the Product and Product Marketing Management, Development, and UX. Within the organization, guilds focused on each specific functional area comprised between 7 and 10 individuals. “Home for Money” crossed all functions, I led UXR as a Sr. Staff individual contributor, collaborating with UX designers, product managers, and tech leads from multiple guilds. Teams were distributed globally and developed products in a highly collaborative Agile environment.

Why and why now?:

Spanning a number of different merchant work-flows, all loosely having to do with “Money”, the company believed merchants had frustrations in knowing where to go to do specific related tasks. For example, paying a bill was associated with account settings, modifying payment methods associated with design templates. The newly released Capital Loan program was only revealed to merchants via a personalized home page card. There was no way for merchants to discover the Capital program.

Opportunity / Problem:

Using the new “pay with balance” feature as a driver, there was an opportunity to create a consolidated area for merchants to learn and interact with functionality related to their money so that merchants could have an improved experience. Furthermore, the business believed merchants could reap the benefits of financial services to the extent that they would have greater business success - measured by increased gross merchandise volume and reducing merchant churn. 

Over the past 1.5 years, no matter the study or methodology, we heard from merchants that they are stressed about money.   We knew merchants struggled with “cash flow” through research, and we knew merchants struggled with understanding how much money they were spending on their business management platform.

Hypothesis:

The business believed we could help merchants with  “cash flow” - both reducing churn and improving GMV -  by building them a “home for money”  section in their business management dashboard that would show them the relationship between “cash-in” and “cash-out” of their business management dashboard.   Further, we believed a “place for the money management” would provide merchants with a place to go to find functionality and information related to anything financial - including opting in to pay a premium to have the payment provider expedite cash into their checking account. 

We believed that we could start by exposing the “pay with balance” feature in this new money area, and use that workflow to show merchants something about their cash flow.

Some folks believed that the product could develop the functionality to replace traditional business banking and wondered if merchants could conceive of using their balance function like they would use a business banking account.

The key problem we were trying to solve:

‘Balance” is a very new capability with limited usage and we don't have a good understanding of how a merchant might want to use their balance beyond paying for things within their business management platform.  Can we build a “Money” function around “balance”?

1. Do merchants conceive of using the “home for money” page to manage their cash flow?  

2. Does the interface “make sense” to the merchants in understanding money in and out of their business?

3. Do they see a value in using balance to pay other fees and things like Capital remittance?

4. Would they opt to hold money in Balance if they could spend it?

5. What kind of accounting would they need to see to understand “cash flow”

Hypothesis:  Merchants use accounting and banking functions to manage money in and out of their business.  If we use “balance” to replicate that type of functionality in the product environment, it will help merchants with “cash flow.” 

Work:

We started with Concept testing in the field showing a panel of merchants we’d been working with for 18 months an early prototype.

The findings led us to do a deep Data Analysis to understand what merchants would benefit from using the proposed balance function.

Finally we used a large scale survey to quantify what we learned in small group interview sessions.

Once we knew we were on the right track, I conducted some contextual interviews with merchants to understand more about their banking experience. These interviews resulted in me building a mental model that we used to map opportunities.

“Maintaining a Ballpark” is something merchants do outside of the formal review of their profit and loss statements.  Merchants routinely “maintain a ballpark” reconciling their business admin tool accounts with their checking accounts - this is different from getting Profit and Loss or “Cash Flow” reports from their accountants. 

During hack days, the entire team did FinTech Desk research to understand more about competitive, technology, and market trends.

Findings:

The first balance concept testing sessions out in the field confirmed that merchants would use this to maintain a ballpark view of their finances. We hypothesized that US merchants have an appetite to spend money directly from their business management accounts and might keep their money there if the rewards are better than the ones they currently receive from traditional financial institutions.

End Result:

This research had a direct impact on the development of a money management balance account built for small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs launched in May 2020.