Aspire x Stripe
Stripe Integration workflow
PRODUCT/ UX-UI
2024-2025
Aspire, a neo-bank product, streamlines payments for SMB's and strives to provide the best experience for their customers, while partnering with a wide variety of payment gateways and wallets that their customers would need. Stripe as a payment wallet in Aspire, was one such crucial integration that faced a lot of CX issues and our clients reported a majority of low scores in the feedback form that pops up after using this feature. So the goal was to optimize this design and reduce overall customer support contact rate!
Went through the existing flow and documented observations, UX pain points and potential solutions.
Viewed 10+ user sessions (Smartlook) to analyse where users get stuck during the Stripe setup and application
Collaborated with the Senior Product Manager (Payments), to understand target release goals and metrics
Role
Design QA, Alpha testing, UI Build, DS documentation
COLLABORATORS
Tribe Design Manager, Director of Design, Senior Product Manager (Payments), Senior Visual Designer
DURATION
1 month 20 days
TOOLS
Figma, Smartlook (Session analysis)
Aspire's initial Stripe launch received a lot of negative feedback on the UX which had to be improved.
67%
-Percentage of users who rated the feature flow as 1/2 stars out of 5 :(
Through user interviews, we also discovered that end users were confused on the setup process, indicating a need for for visual resources.
Discovering the problem
Did you find any difficulties in setting up Stripe with Aspire? At which step did you feel stuck or confused? Are you aware of the benefits offered by Aspire x Stripe, rather than just using Stripe directly? What led you to contact customer support instead of resolving it yourself?
Qualitative interviews
Did you find any difficulties in setting up Stripe with Aspire? At which step did you feel stuck or confused? Are you aware of the benefits offered by Aspire x Stripe, rather than just using Stripe directly? What led you to contact customer support instead of resolving it yourself?
B. Survey- Customer support feedback (NPS)
We gathered available customer feedback data from the past 3 months. Our focus was on feedback rated negatively (detractors) to pinpoint issues experienced by multiple customers. *Detailed insights coming soon*
Recognizing these oppurtunities, we aimed to improve this feature and ask:
User stories to guide designs!
As an incorporated business using Aspire, I want to-
"Be aware of how Aspire x Stripe works, its benefits, settlement terms, and fees before signing up"
"Easily setup Stripe to receive payments, regardless of my technical proficiency"
"Use Stripe as a payment method in all my invoices and payment links, no matter which currency i choose"
"Be able to change my Stripe account incase I've linked a wrong Stripe account of mine"
Obstacles faced through my experience
Estimating timelines for proposed design assets
While creating new designs, there are always oppurtunities to enhance certain assets to drive the point home. One such case was a visually engaging coupon structure that I proposed and well received by design (img below). However due to the feature roadmap, accounting for a new storybook component and then adding it in code proved to be challenging as we did not have enough chillies (1 chilli= 1 developers bandwidth for 1 month). Hence an alternate/ easy to develop design was proposed instead.
Understanding Stripe as a payment gateway
Since this feature relied heavily on another product out there, lot of preliminary research went into understanding how Stripe's payout account workflow works and how the money is settled into another app such as Aspire. Through these studies, I also proposed a design to figure out how to save our customers money by adding additional payout currency accounts in Stripe that again settle in Aspire.
Ideation and design
After gaining clarity on the challenges our users encountered, identifying key pain points, and determining areas of focus, we initiated discussions across the Payments tribe management to define the scope and timeline. User stories were prioritised to build the alpha version which can be deployed asap. We created a fully prototyped version to identify any discovery issues or copy improvements that can be addressed right away. We then tested the designs with our regular trusted clients in SG to verify if it solves the issue in their opinion
What we dicovered from internal testing and beta launch-
" Integrating Stripe into Aspire was relatively easier, kudos to the video that was shown once i started setting it up "
" Loving the benefits of Aspire x Stripe with lesser settlement times, great incentive for my business! " Wasnt very clear on whether i could create a new account in stripe
" Super useful for my payouts as we use Stripe very frequently. Is there no support for other currency settlements?
Insight gained-
Customers wanted a way to receive money in a different currency account as compared to their primary account through Stripe
Reflections
After ensuring Design system compliant designs as well as mobile screens, design handoff went smoothly with the Senior Product manager (Payments) holding a handoff call with the engineering team. The design is shipped and live in the Hong Kong Aspire accounts. Incase of adding new geographies (US- Q4,2025), the design was made scalable to implement easily. As for next steps, monitoring is constantly going on through NPS scores specifically focused on user creation of receivables that use stripe. Additionally, user sessions in Smartlook are monitored as well whenever a user reports a detractor. This is to ensure a consistently great user experience without any friction points. These systems match the belief i have, that design is never finished and can always be improved upon based on our users!
Thank you for looking at this design study!
If you have any questions or want to know more, please don't hesitate to contact me! Meanwhile you can check my projects, see my timeline or learn more about me