Introduction 👩🏻💻
I joined the Payments team when I started at Amazon Business and stayed for 1 year.
*Amazon Business serves the e-procurement needs of businesses, and we serve their payment needs. To access Amazon Business, you need a business account to sign in to Amazon.com
Pay with Your Bank was one of my first projects. After designing an early version for user testing, it was placed below the line for several reasons.
Recently, I revisited this project, leveraging the initial context and redesigning the experience based on my own research into EU regulations and technological feasibility.
Amazon Business:
Current Direct Debit solution offered in EU market doesn’t require any bank account validation, which results in fraud losses
Current problems 🥲
Customers:
UK customers have no solution to pay by EFT (electronic funds transfer) on Amazon Business
Enabling the “Pay with Your Bank“ payment method in the EU/UK:
Initiative
1) For Amazon Business: Validate customers’ bank accounts for each payment to reduce fraud in the EU
2) For customers: Enhance security and speed for EFT payments and close the payment method gap for UK users by launching an account-based payment method
Open Banking enables a more secure and instant payment architecture (compared to the existing Direct Debit solution) for EFT payments, providing benefits for both customers and Amazon:
Opportunity
To comply with EU regulations, users must be directed to their bank app to complete authentication every time they choose “Pay with Your Bank“
Main UX challenge
How might we balance compliance with a frictionless user experience?
I rethought the end-to-end experience, researching EU regulations and technology feasibility to identify key improvement areas:
Research & Ideation
1) Proactive user education and onboarding
2) Personalized bank and account preferences
3) Seamless authentication support & error recovery
4) Support for Variable Recurring Payments
5) Post-payment assurance
Proactive onboarding: Set up customer expectations
Solution
For first-time users or those without a default payment method, direct them to payment selection and display the 'Pay with Your Bank' option with relevant info.
Consideration: If a popover too heavy?
For returning users with default payment methods, skip payment selection and add a promotional card about 'Pay with Your Bank' below the order total for visibility.
Consideration: Should all users go through the payment selection step when launching the new payment method for visibility?
Complete payment flow
Personalization: Simplify generic flows of selecting bank and bank account for future transactions
Solution
According to the Open Banking regulations, users must authenticate via their banking app every time, and their bank account details (e.g. last 4 digits) will never be shared with Amazon.
Option 1
Post-authentication set-up for saving bank account preferences, using tokenization
Trade-off: Users have to name their bank account for future identification since Amazon cannot access their account details, which may lead to low adoption
Option 2
Seamless pre-authentication for saving bank preferences
Trade-off: Easy setup for remembering bank choices, but customers still need to select their bank account each time
Seamless authentication support & error recovery
Solution
Authentication failures or app redirects may frustrate customers. We can detect common issues, suggest fixes, and provide alternatives/retry shortcut.
Use deep links and cross-device optimization to direct customers to bank apps or app downloads.
Support Variable Recurring Payments to enable automated transactions
Solution
Enable automatic payments for subscriptions — customers only need to authenticate and select their bank account the first time.
To comply with regulations, we must allow users to set a maximum amount per payment, frequency, and expiry date.
Post-payment assurance
Solution
Enhance customer confidence with transaction security insights post-checkout. Users gain full visibility into their payments through confirmations and secure transaction IDs across multiple touch points.
