Credit Card Payment Options

TD proposed creating a digital self-serve portal that allows the customers with past-due credit card balance to select a payment option based on their preferences and their financial situations.

Before, the same service was only available through the Call Centre. But most customers could not be reached, even after months of agents actively dialling before charge-off. Besides, many customers prefer a digital experience to engage with the bank to resolve their past-due account balances.

While this portal was a new concept for the Canadian market at TD, USA Online Banking already had a similar portal. Our design team was engaged to create an easy and intuitive experience for the customers to complete the flow with a certain action or action plan.

• Owned the design and led the team, a UX designer and a visual designer, from concept through launch.
• Engaged the content designer into research instead of at the end. A content designer normally arrives at a later stage to write final copy. I partnered with ours from the start and collaborated with him to write the testing copy, so language was something we validated with users. The flow was text-heavy and the payment options were complex for a general audience, and people would be reading it at a stressful moment.
• Built the studies with a dedicated researcher. Designing the tests together is what let us put both the flow and the language in front of users in one programme.
• Worked inside a weekly review cadence. A design director and three senior managers at TD reviewed the work every week to make sure it aligned with the design system and the art direction, and to hold up to senior scrutiny continuously rather than at a few milestones.
• Built a working demo. This was more effective at conveying the vision than traditional presentation decks for the business owner. The portal user experience demo was used to share the vision with senior audiences and to socialize the experience across the businesses.

The research question was narrow and useful: identify exactly which elements, words, and steps people found frustrating or confusing. Not whether they liked it. Where it broke down.

A dedicated researcher on the team ran the sessions, and we designed the studies together. Two rounds:

1. Usability of the payment flow.
2. Concept comprehension: testing the copy itself to get to a tone and content that worked for people in a difficult moment.

Testing the copy separately mattered, because the options themselves were the hard part. The differences between paying in full, paying in part, and committing to an arrangement are not distinctions a stressed person should have to decode.

What came back:

Moving the service into digital banking changed who it could reach. In its first month, the tool reached tens of thousands of eligible customers, with 46% taking action, and 73% of the “offers” (payment options) presented were accepted.

About two-thirds of that traffic came through mobile rather than desktop, and the two channels converted at almost exactly the same rate. Customers in this situation were reaching for their mobile app. It also contributed to reducing charge-off rates and call-centre volume.

They found their options themselves, in a flow they understood, in a tone that told them the bank was trying to help.

It won the 2024 TD Project of the Year, was recognized across the bank for innovation, and was featured in the TD Innovation Showcase.

Within one month of initial launch: