Success Story - Loan Payment
Moving loan payments from branches to digital.
Evolving the existing payment experience to reduce friction, improve financial understanding and increase digital adoption, connecting customer needs with business and portfolio goals.
- Starting point
- 67%
- Initial drop-off in the digital flow (representing only a 33% base adoption).
- Digital adoption
- 64%
- Digital adoption reached in the app.
- Target: 50%–60% · Achieved: 64% (from 33% baseline).
- TARGET EXCEEDED
- Portfolio impact
- 3.3%
- IMOR achieved after a -1.4% reduction.
- Over a 4.7% base IMOR rate (target: reduce 1%–3%).
- UX Strategy
- E2E Product Design
- Behavioral Design
- Product Analytics
- Role
- Product Designer / UX Strategy
- Scope
- Discovery → Strategy → Design → Validation → Delivery → Measurement
- Collaboration
- UX Research · Business · Engineering · Credit Product Stakeholders
- Product
- Financial App · Loan Payment
- Project type
- Evolution of an existing digital product
Context
Loan payment was already available in the app. The challenge was not digitizing the service from scratch, but evolving an existing experience customers struggled to understand and adopt.
The flow contained multiple financial concepts, payment scenarios and business rules. While these options provided flexibility from a product perspective, they increased the cognitive load required for customers to simply understand what they had to pay.
This was especially relevant for customers with little experience in digital financial services. Despite having a digital alternative available, many still chose physical branches to complete their payments.
“The challenge was not making payments digital; they already were. The challenge was making digital payments understandable and valuable enough for customers to choose them.”
The Challenge
Research and product data showed that availability did not translate into adoption. Approximately 67% of customers who started the payment flow did not complete the transaction, with a critical friction point when selecting the payment amount or concept.
Usability testing and interviews revealed difficulty understanding the financial concepts presented. In addition, research with customers in branches uncovered an important behavioral factor: the physical receipt provided tangible evidence that their payment had been completed, giving greater reassurance and a sense of control over the transaction.
67%
Initial journey drop-off
Understanding
Difficulty understanding payment concepts
Trust
Physical confirmation reinforced reassurance
Adoption
Digital availability did not create digital behavior
Business Goal
The initiative connected customer experience with measurable business goals. The primary objective was to increase digital payment adoption from a 33% baseline to a 50%–60% target, contributing to an expected 1%–3% IMOR reduction over a 4.7% base rate.
Increasing digital adoption also supported a broader operational goal: reducing dependency on branch operations and their associated costs.
Digital payment adoption
IMOR
The opportunity was to create customer value and business value through the same product experience.
Discovery — Understanding the system before redesigning the interface
Discovery started by understanding the existing product: what worked, where friction lived, financial rules, technical constraints and behavior. Working closely with UX Research and stakeholders made it possible to connect user behavior with data and business priorities to define the problem and hypotheses.
Current experience
- Live flow
- Known friction
User evidence
- Usability testing
- Interviews
- Behavioral barriers
Product data
- Journey drop-off
- Digital adoption
Business rules
- Credit rules
- Financial requirements
Technology
- Existing capabilities
- Technical constraints
Key Insights
01 — Understanding
Customers did not always understand which payment option was right or what effect it would have on their loan.
02 — Availability ≠ Adoption
Making a feature available does not automatically change payment behavior.
03 — Tangible confirmation · Key Behavioral Design input
The physical receipt was more than information. It acted as tangible evidence that the transaction had been completed.
04 — Financial clarity
Customers needed the experience to explain the consequences of their decisions, not simply to read financial terminology.
Product Strategy — From a payment interface to a behavioral adoption strategy.
The strategy went beyond simplifying screens. The goal was to change the conditions influencing payment behavior by combining data, financial rules and technical constraints into an experience that was easy to understand.
- 01UnderstandReduce financial complexity.
- 02DecideHelp customers understand what to pay and what each decision means.
- 03ActReduce the effort required to complete a payment.
- 04TrustProvide clear and persistent evidence of the transaction.
- 05RepeatUse contextual reminders to encourage the digital habit.
- 06ConnectRemove barriers between payment and other capabilities.
Key Design Decisions
Decision 01
Simplify financial decisions
Problem
The experience exposed customers to multiple financial concepts.
Decision
Reduce and prioritize the key decisions:
- Payment to avoid interest
- Pay off loan
- Other amount
Rationale: Customers should not have to understand the internal complexity of a financial product in order to pay.
“We did not remove the complexity of the financial product. We prevented customers from having to manage it themselves.”
Decision 02
Explain consequences, not just amounts
Problem
Selecting an amount did not necessarily help customers understand what that payment would do.
Decision
Use dynamic explanatory content based on the selected or entered amount. The interface explained what the payment covered and how it affected the customer's loan where applicable.
From
“How much do you want to pay?”
To
“If you pay this amount, this is what happens with your loan.”
Decision 03
Design around context and intent
Reminder
Home → Reminder banner → Relevant loan payment
Product
Home → Loan Product card → Loan detail → Pay
Feature
Home → Actions menu → Pay Loans → Select loan when multiple loans exist
The experience adapted to the user's context instead of forcing a single navigation path. When the reminder acted as the entry point, the journey could take the customer directly to the relevant loan and payment action.
Decision 04
Remove friction outside the ecosystem
Problem
Customers could hold the money needed for the payment at another financial institution.
Decision
Provide a secondary “Pay from another bank” option. The experience provided:
- CLABE associated with the loan
- Amount information
- Clear SPEI transfer instructions
- Expected payment application information
Solving the payment flow required looking beyond internal screens.
Decision 05 · Key Behavioral Design decision
Turn physical reassurance into digital trust
Research finding: customers paying in branches valued having a tangible receipt confirming the transaction.
Decision: create an official, persistent digital receipt.
- Operation number / reference
- Date and time
- Amount
- Loan information
- Source account
- Payment information
- Relevant post-payment information
- Download
- Share
- Future access through loan transactions
“Instead of asking customers to simply trust the digital channel, we translated an existing source of reassurance into the experience.”
Decision 06
Design for repeated behavior
The goal was not only to complete a digital payment, but to make digital payment progressively easier to repeat.
Trigger (Reminder)
Payment reminder roughly three days before the due date
Action
Direct access to the relevant payment journey
Reduced friction
Relevant payment option + short journey
Feedback
Immediate transaction confirmation and digital receipt
Repetition
Next payment cycle
Direct debit existed in the ecosystem as an adjacent capability.
E2E Experience — Complex financial rules. One simple customer journey.
Entry
Three main entry points:
- Payment reminder banner
- Loan Product card
- Pay Loans action from the Home menu
Understand and Decide
The main payment screen contained:
- Loan being paid
- Relevant payment amount / concept
- Pay off loan option
- Other amount
- Dynamic explanation based on the selected amount
- Source account
- Ability to change the source account when multiple accounts were available
- Secondary option to pay from another bank
Alternative path — Pay from another bank
The interface provided the information and instructions required to complete the transfer.
Confirm
The customer reviewed the operation and confirmed it using the high-level digital authentication / token process required by the bank.
Pay
The operation was processed.
Trust
An official digital receipt confirmed the transaction.
Follow-up
The receipt could be downloaded, shared and accessed again through loan transactions.
Validation & Delivery
The role continued from discovery through post-launch measurement. Regulatory, business and technical constraints were treated as design inputs, not as predefined solutions.
Regulatory, business and technical constraints were treated as design inputs, not as predefined solutions.
User validation
Moderated Qualitative Testing
Prototype evaluation with branch and app users. 90% of participants understood the financial impact of their payment in under 10 seconds once the concepts were simplified.
Design iteration
Feedback-driven Refinement
Added a prominent confirmation reference number and quick download to the digital receipt, after identifying that proof-of-payment certainty was the main trust barrier.
Design → Engineering
DesignOps & Experience QA
Documented edge cases and business rules in Figma. Direct support during development sprints to ensure mathematical accuracy in the interface and visual consistency.
Measurement — Measuring behavior, not just delivery.
Success was assessed by connecting the experience with changes in digital behavior and operational efficiency.
Funnel
Payment journey completion and drop-off
Adoption
Share of loan payments completed digitally
Business
Reduced dependency on branch payment operations
Portfolio
Contribution to IMOR performance
The goal was not simply to ship a flow, but to understand whether we were changing customer behavior.
Impact
Adoption starting point
67%
Initial drop-off caused by cognitive friction (33% base adoption).
Adoption result
64%
Target: 50%–60% · Achieved: 64%
TARGET EXCEEDED
IMOR starting point
4.7%
Initial portfolio delinquency rate.
IMOR result
3.3%
Achieved a -1.4% reduction (Target: 1%–3%)
TARGET MET
The initiative showed how reducing behavioral friction in a financial flow drives digital adoption and contributes to business outcomes.
Learnings
- 01
Availability does not create adoption
Designing requires understanding behavioral barriers.
- 02
Design for user and business value
UX decisions influence adoption and operational efficiency.
- 03
Constraints are inputs
Understanding why a rule exists makes it possible to collaborate strategically without adding complexity for the user.
“This project changed how I approach Product Design: from designing interfaces that work, to designing systems that influence behavior, support business goals and can be measured after launch.”
Erick Meneses — Success Story - Loan Payment