You are a PM at Google Pay. Design a feature for paying credit card bills.

Google Pay is a free mobile payment system from Google that uses UPI to make instant payments between users and businesses. Reliance JIO made the internet accessible to millions of people in India and the global pandemic accelerated the adoption of online payments. The goal of Google Pay is to make money simple. The application is clean and easy to use and therefore has made its in-roads to even the less tech-savvy. Google Pay also has a rewards feature where it randomly incentivizes you for transactions you make. These incentives include offers from brands along with usual cashback.

Let’s structure this article as an interview simulation.

Me: I want to first start with the “Why?”. Today most people use Google Pay to pay at shops, for deliveries, and for some recurring bills like the internet.

Credit card holders belong to a segment considered to have higher purchasing power which makes charging a premium for their eyeballs justifiable. The goal of this feature is to register Google Pay as a default payment method for anything and everything. The more seamless transactions a user can do, the more likely it is for them to stay on the platform. With the number of credit card holders increasing every year and services like BNPL becoming increasingly popular, the direction above seems precise. Is my understanding correct?

Interviewer: Yeah

Me: Since this is a service primarily in India, I’d like to limit the scope to India as a country, though it can be expanded to other countries later.

Interviewer: Makes sense.

Me: Is it safe to assume that it will be a mobile feature for users who already have an account with Google Pay?

Interviewer: Yeah let’s start there.

Me: There are merchants as well who use Google Pay but for this let's keep the scope limited to consumers as businesses have their processes when it comes to payments and finances.

Interviewer: Yes, this will be consumer first.

Me: Are there any time and/or resource constraints that I should be aware of?

Interviewer: Not really.

Based on the above answers let me summarize the problem statement:

Me: I’d like to focus on the goal of increasing the # of people who have an account with Google Pay to pay their credit card bills through the platform. The goal is to make paying credit card bills a seamless, insightful, and trustworthy experience so users are hooked to the platform. This engagement could later be monetized.

Now that we have the goal we are aiming to achieve, let's look at the user personas in the light of who they are, what they do, how they use our product, and when. This is important because value creation is by the context in which the product is used.

The following personas come to mind:

• 1. Rohan, 34 works for an investment bank, he travels quite a lot for his job and has a really busy schedule. He has a couple of credit cards that allow different perks. He gets daily allowances for his travel that he can get reimbursements for.
• 2. Preeti, 28 works as a nutritionist and loves to shop. She is building a Youtube channel and constantly buys things online. The EMI feature is her absolute go-to. Credit cards give her the liberty to spend even when she is slightly crunched for cash.
• 3. Naresh is a 50-year-old dad who got a credit card to help his daughter pay for college applications abroad. He now uses the card for some of his expenses like gas, plane tickets, etc. He is very diligent with paying the bills.

With the given context I would like to prioritize the personas:

Both Rahul and Preeti, are young busy individuals, living in a Tier 1 city where Google Pay is very popular. Money management as a concept is never taught and therefore these young folks seem to be the right segment that could be helped with this offering. Therefore I’d like to prioritize these two personas. Are you with me so far?

Interviewer: yeah.

Now going through the user journey let’s figure out a few pain points that the users experience in paying credit card bills.

• 1. The payment due dates for each card are different and hard to remember. Most people like to pay on the last day causing them to either frantically check the date or forget to pay on time.
• 2. The statements are generated over email or in different accounts, making it tedious and causing users to not know upfront how much they need to pay. This leads to not saving enough to make complete payments and feeling crunched towards the end of the month.
• 3. Users also do not understand any hidden/interest charges that are levied.
• 4. The statements are usually just lines of transactions without clear categorization. Sometimes the text doesn’t even clearly state the merchant, having the user go back in memory lane to identify where they spent that money.
• 5. People overshoot their budgets with credit cards and start drowning in debt. Since the money is not deducted at the moment from their bank accounts, the excitement of purchases overshadows the perils of debt.
• 6. The users are not incentivized enough for making complete payments on time to create positive reinforcement.

Solutions:

1. A user must be able to register their credit cards with the Google Pay app. The scan card feature makes it a 2 click process. Google Pay already has all the major banks on the platform to facilitate transactions. They need to partner with CC companies like Visa, and Mastercard to get information about transactions, due dates, etc. This may need some incentivization, to begin with as UPI has hampered its standing in the payments space.

2. At the start of the month, the users can be shown the total dues the user needs to pay so that they can budget accordingly. Users open the Google Pay app multiple times a day, which can be used as an opportunity to show when their bill is due. It could appear as a banner T-3 days from the due date. The banner could showcase the money the user will save in terms of interest charges by making on-time full payments. The user can also integrate with Google calendar to get reminded of the due date.

3. When the user is about to make the payment, they should always be nudged to make full payments. If they chose partial payments, they should be able to see how much extra they would have to pay because of interest charges. Making it explicit will help them visualize how it is a bad financial decision in the long run. Any hidden charges can also be explicitly called out to the users.

4. Getting transaction data from credit card companies can help provide a couple of interesting insights to the users. For example, Users can be shown a summary of the highest transactions, the category the user spends the most money on, merchants on whom the user spends money, and their credit score. The user could also be nudged if there is an uptick in non-essential spending. Even if all the transaction data isn’t available, data could be requested in the form of queries preventing access to all data.

5. The users can set monthly budgets to cap their spending. As they start approaching the cap, they could be reminded to spend wisely. Every time a user meets their goal, a saving tree could grow bigger, a visual reminder.

6. Once the user has paid the bill, the users could be rewarded and provided access to really enticing offers based on user data google ad services have, it could also be google storage, credits, etc.

7. Users should be able to make payments over 1 lakh for credit card payments.

The next step is to prioritize these solutions on a roadmap. The approach I'd like to take is using the RICE framework.

Features #1, #2, and #7 are table stakes for enabling credit card payments. The ability to make multiple card payments on one platform creates differentiation. #6 creates an incentive for users to pay their bills via Google Pay and the effort required is low as rewards already exist for other UPI transactions. This feature could evolve later in terms of personalization. #4 will require some effort in getting the required APIs but will be a great product differentiation. #3 showcases true customer obsession which will most likely increase trust in the platform. #5 can be a very personal choice for a few users who chose to set that goal for themselves, therefore it could be in the next version.

In short, we should start with #1, #2, #3, #7, and #4 with parallel efforts to get the transaction data. #5 could come in as V2.

Metrics to measure:

• 1. Number of people adding their credit cards to Google Pay.
• 2. Number of people paying their credit bills through Google Pay
• 3. NPS
• 4. Payment failures rates

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