Giving merchants the flexibility to schedule payments to their vendors, suppliers and contractors via virtual cards or bank transfers.
Pomelo
Launched for beta testing Dec 2022
Product Design
Web
Mobile (iOS & Android)
Pomelo provides accounts receivable products, such as invoicing, payment links, QR code payments, tap to pay, and point of sale solutions, to merchants in the UK and financial institutions worldwide.
Pomelo merchants have disjointed and outdated pay-in and pay-out systems, using different platforms that create cash flow inefficiencies and lead to high operational costs.
To offer a closed-loop payment solution, Pomelo aims to provide merchants with a simple way to pay vendors and contractors.
Customers pay merchants and merchants can then use those funds to pay their suppliers which will create a closed loop payment solution.
When I joined the project, I noticed a misalignment between the Product Management team and the CEO on our objectives. To help I quickly began conceptualising and researching to align stakeholders and shape the product requirements towards our goals.
To better understand the process involved for finance and operation teams to pay vendors, suppliers and contractors, I spent some time conducting interviews to understand their preferences, thoughts and feelings.
Finance and Operations team of any merchant using the Pomelo platform.
Businesses in industries (service-based or product-based) with a structured supply chain such as travel and construction.
After carrying out user interviews with our internal finance team, a potential client and existing clients, we established the following themes.
A finance team gets hundreds of invoices per month, so it's important to prioritise which ones they should handle first.
Assign payment responsibilities to each team member based on their specific roles and responsibilities.
Automate the syncing of invoices from various accounting tools to save time.
Save time by paying multiple bills together instead of scheduling individual payments.
Assist users in understanding fund allocation by providing information on available funds, scheduled payments, and pending payments.
Due to time constraints, I was only able to carry out usability test using Maze. After multiple user tests, we established that there were elements from each concept we wished to proceed with.
The user testing also helped define the product's name, which we decided to go with "Bills".
After carrying out ideation and user interviews with our internal finance team, a potential client and existing clients, we established the following themes.
Automating accounts payables and reconciliation can significantly reduce the overheads for the merchant while helping them better plan.
Bringing B2C payment experience to the B2B payments, with smooth and intuitive user journeys and better controls.
Card payments are more transparent as once the payment is confirmed, there is a certainty of duration for receiving the funds for the supplier.
The final designs of the supply chain payments product is focused on helping the user understand the status of their accounts payables and help them make informed decisions.
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I used Principle to create an interactive prototype to demonstrate the interactions and allow our business development team to demo the product to potential clients.
If you are viewing on desktop, you can interact with this prototype by clicking around or view here.
Being involved in the project from the start was great as it really helped all the stakeholders involved come to a conclusion on what they wanted to achieve with the product.
My initial design process was integral to helping the business understand what direction to go in with their accounting payable solution.
The product was coming into it's final sprint for the MVP and is aimed to be released mid November 2022.
The success of the product will be determined on two key KPI; the number of scheduled payments and the number of expense transactions carried out on virtual cards.
