Pix experience of XP Investments
Context
XP Investments is one of the largest financial companies in Brazil.
+ 1.4M active users in bank accounts
+ 4M active users in investment accounts
R$ 1.06 Trillion in total client assets
R$ 9.7 Billion in payment transactions over Q3 2023 only
As part of the Digital Account team, I was assigned to lead the design of the Pix experience at the beginning of 2020.
What is Pix?
It’s a new payment system introduced by Brazil's Central Bank, which allows users to instantly transfer money, with no costs, to another person or company using an alias (QR code, e-mail address, phone number, etc).
This changed the way payments are done across the country, and had a big impact in people's lives.
My role
Design lead - responsible for guiding all design and research activities. I collaborated with the Payment Methods squad, a multidisciplinary team made up of 10 people from business and engineering.
Over the course of 1 year, I was responsible for leading the discovery, ideation and design solution for the new Pix experience.
Problem
🔴 Ensuring the timely launch of a new feature in compliance with Central Bank guidelines, requiring meticulous adherence to regulations and deadlines.
🔴 Convincing customers to adopt a new and unfamiliar product or service, necessitating effective communication and user education strategies.
🔴 Addressing competition from all financial institutions also integrating Pix into their apps, demanding differentiation and unique value propositions to attract and retain users.
Project goal
🟢 Create an intuitive and consistent experience that allows customers to learn about Pix and quickly use the service
🟢 Have experience validated by the Central Bank
🟢 Make the customer use XP's Pix as their first option
Key project phases
Following the human-centered design process, the key activities included:
• Review of regulatory requirements from Central Bank.
• Experience mapping.
• Creation of concepts and high-fidelity navigable prototype.
• Usability tests focused on validating the journey and gathering insights for future improvements.
• Handoff with a detailed description of each user interaction, accessibility best practices, communication rules and the set of metrics to be tracked once the app goes live.
At every stage, the work in progress was presented and validated by the product team and stakeholders.
Minimum experience requirements
As part of the Discovery process, the initial step involved a thorough analysis of the requirements provided by the Central Bank, followed by the mapping of key functionalities necessary for the MVP launch. This included:
Experience mapping
To ensure all team members had a clear understanding of the user flow and key touchpoints, I mapped out the new Pix experience highlighting the main tasks and subtasks.
Design solution
With a clear understanding of the regulatory requirements, I led the conception of the MVP, prioritizing:
👆 A simple and guided payment journey with the least amount of clicks.
🔍 Easy access to support content and tutorials.
📢 Consistent communication rules that help customers learn about Pix.
🎮 Use of gamification principles to increase customer engagement.
Throughout the project, Brazil’s Central Bank made constant updates to the requirements, which required quick iterations and reprioritization.
The Pix experience leverages the components from XP’s design system and follows the accessibility guidelines from WCAG (AA level).
Usability tests
To validate the proposed experience, I collaborated with other designers on the team to conduct moderated usability tests with eligible customers. The main objectives of the test included:
• Validating the usability for all Pix user flows including the transactional journey, keys, limits and portability.
• Validating the impact of the authentication flow via facial biometrics.
• Understanding customer interest in each type of Pix key and which is most important to them.
Design impact in business
Through the results of the tests, it was possible to evaluate the usability of the experience and identify usage patterns. These insights had a significant impact on final design and business decisions: with quantitative and qualitative data, we were able to determine points of attention and the main areas of interest of XP customers to highlight possible pain points for the MVP launch.
Design challenges
The project presented important challenges that required flexibility and strategic approaches.
📖 Complexity of Central Bank’s rules and business requirements for integration of the XP Digital Account.
I conducted multiple meetings to review the requirements and ensure they could be translated into a simple and intuitive user experience.
🏁 Managing stakeholder expectations due to the high visibility of the project and collaborating with multiple business units
I set realistic delivery goals, provided regular updates on the work in progress, and created detailed documentation to be shared across all business units.
⚙️ Technical limitations in the implementation phase required adaptations to the final solution.
I worked in close collaboration with the development team, remaining flexible to accommodate any changes
Final experience
Pix results at XP: A year in review
Since its launch, Pix has consistently delivered excellent results for the company. The new service has been a tremendous success with XP customers, processing over R$ 1.4 billion monthly.
The user-centered approach and incorporation of multiple customer feedback touchpoints have ensured that the Pix experience is seamless, efficient, and meets user expectations. The designs provide customers with the necessary guidance to overcome any obstacles, making Pix the most widely used payment service among XP customers.
Experience improvements
After launching the MVP, the next step was monitoring the metrics and tracking user feedback. By deep diving into the Pix transactional flow, it was possible to identify a 19% drop before reaching the validation stage.
By tagging the customer's actions, we realized that the greatest concentration of losses occurred before the selection of the Pix alias — represented by a drawer.
As an improvement, I led a quick design sprint to rethink the transfer experience. It was proposed to remove the drawer, bringing the contact sent to the summary stage, in addition to an adjustment to the single input field algorithm to more assertively differentiate the CPF and cell phone number values.
