Recurring Payments
Improving the Bill Pay service in Navy Federal’s mobile banking app
Overview
The bill pay service in a mobile banking app is supposed to offer convenience and organization when handling your expenses. However, managing finances has become more of a hassle now than ever. A big factor in this issue is the rise of subscriptions. These small monthly payments are often forgotten and go under the radar. That makes it so frustrating when a surprise expenses throws off our budget. Financial institutions have taken notice of this and are attempting to provide solutions, but not all have been effective. I propose designing a feature in the Navy Federal banking app that tracks these recurring payments. This will assist their users in awareness and organizing their finances more accurately.
Role
Product Designer | UX Researcher | 2023
Challenge
The challenge is to incorporate a feature in Navy Federal’s mobile bill pay service that helps track subscriptions and recurring payments. This tracking service is an extension to the bill pay section, but has a different goal and function. It should be design so that it’s very easy to use and not confused with automated billing.
Solution
By getting explicit permission from the user to monitor specified accounts, Navy Federal can create an ongoing list of recurring payments in a separate area of the Bill Pay section. This list will bring awareness to what subscriptions their users are paying for while also providing details of the total monthly cost that is being charged each month.
Verifying the Problem
Right now Navy Federal has provided a solution for handling recurring payments by suggesting the answer is their automated billing feature. It even states From streaming subscriptions to gym memberships in the article. The idea is you don’t have to keep up with your recurring payments because we’ll pay them automatically. There are two problems with this solution. One, most subscription services have you enter your payment information when you sign up, so the automated billing is already taken care of. Two, automating payments can’t help with tracking subscriptions that users aren’t aware of.
Another service Navy Federal has implemented is the snapshot feature. It works by using a predefined catalog of popular streaming services and sending an email to their users with how much they’ve spent in streaming over the past 3 months. However, not being able to view the catalog is an issue because the information can not be confirmed as accurate. This includes the analytics they provide.
User Research
I began my research by exploring the challenges people face in managing subscriptions, recurring payments, and their finances overall. Following this, I conducted a survey focused on subscription usage and management. The objective was to gain insight into how people use subscriptions and how effectively they manage them. The survey included six yes-or-no questions and was completed by 22 individuals, all of whom have at least three active subscriptions. I specifically targeted this group to avoid surveying those who do not regularly use subscription services. The questions and results are outlined below.
Insights
The survey revealed that many respondents struggle with forgetting which services they subscribe to. This is especially true for services or products that aren’t typically associated with monthly subscriptions. While people are generally mindful of recurring expenses like WiFi, rent, and common subscriptions such as streaming and music services, they often forget about subscriptions that fall outside the norm.
Another issue is organization. These small and similarly priced subscriptions are easy to mix up. If one factors in these payments coming out of different accounts and the overlap in billing cycle it only complicates the situation. This explains why so many have a hard time keeping up with subscriptions.
Building Empathy
I created two user personas to help illustrate the data I collected from my research. I wanted to demonstrate how the issue of managing recurring payments affects different types of users, whether they are organized or not.
Journey Map
After collecting data and learning about potential users, I created this journey map to capture how this new feature could be discovered and used. I also wanted to illustrate the thoughts and emotions throughout the experience.
Wireframes
My initial wireframe sketches aimed for the ui to be as simple as possible. It consisted of the name, category, and cost of the subscription. Each subscription would have it’s logo attached for clarity and the total cost of all the subscriptions located at the bottom of the screen. After thinking it over, I realized this approach would take away from the consistency with the rest of the bill pay section. So when it came to the mockup I made them similar what’s there currently. The key differences are in the titles and the alert feature which tells the users of potentially new recurring payments monitored in the account.
Mockups
Reflection
One of the first problems I came across while working on this case study is the confusion that could arise from talking about subscriptions and recurring payments. Even though I primarily wanted to focus on the issues that subscriptions had on finance managing, but I knew that every recurring payment wouldn’t be a subscription. I often thought about if using both in the project would cause issues. Another issue with this design is how to handle paused or canceled subscriptions. As of now, any subscription that’s not being charged would have to be removed manually. I’d want that process to be more automated
Although I like my approach of a tracking tool instead of a full subscription management service, there are other features I believe would significantly improve what I’ve done so far. If time and budget allowed, I’d would like to find a way to incorporate accounts outside of Navy Federal. A downside to this current design is that it mainly works when all the recurring payments are tied to Navy Federal accounts. If a user has three subscriptions that are being paid with three different financial institutions, then it won’t make a significant impact.