Project background
DEFT payment gateway consist of 2 portals: payer portal and biller portal. Payer portal provides a way for user to make payment, Biller portal provide biller a way to collect payment, ie receive amount owe for a bill.
As Strata and rent sector have pain points with missed payments. Chasing up these funds is a high cost activity.
Opportunity was identified on the product level for the project to provide a solution to this problem.
Research
I started by doing my research to get insights. I dug through existing researches and also had conversation with a few property managers to try and get insights:
When a payment is missed, system generates email/sms notification daily for first 3-7 days to remind tenants. After that, property manager will follow up to call each day or drop by the property if they are nearby, until the payment is settled. This is a time consuming activity and adds up to significant amount of time spent
Main reason for missed payments
1. Financial difficulties
2. Centrelink / work payment date doesn’t match
3. Miscellaneous. Simply forgot, or some users simply can’t be bother to
Payers who missed their payment because of financial difficulty goes down to legal/eviction. These were out of scope for this project.
Property manager wants to automate payments for those who simply forgot to pay, it could reduce significant amount of call or visit they make each day.
Initial design
Our initial thoughts was to make it as easy as possible for payers, so the team proposed to have the Billers initiate schedule payment. A biller could set up the payment in Biller portal. Once set up, payer would receive email + in-portal notification inside the portal to accept the contract.
Once accepted, it works like a regular scheduled payment.
Validation
I took the design and went through with 6 property managers to get feedback, key takeaways below:
Property managers prefer not to handle request/setup process. They want to automate payment, but not extra process.
2 users mentioned their experience for direct debit with other service providers such as mobile phone plan and gym membership:
1. The process usually starts by sign the contract to agree to be direct debit by the service provider
2. Provide card/bank account details
3. A bill will be generated end of each term based on spending, that amount will then be direct-debited from payer’s account.
It became clear this mental model is what we want to match with:
1. Have the payer sign the contract to agree to be debit
2. Instead of setting up pre-scheduled periodic payments, utilise Billers BMS to generate CSV and charge payer at the end of each term
Final design
1. Conversation happens offline, property manager would inform payers they can opt-in for direct debit with a single click
2. User login to the portal and Opt-in Debit Authorisation in DRN management.
3. In biller portal, Take payments replaced pre-scheduled payment in payer portal
4. Property managers uses their BMS generates CSV of all client’s who have opted-in(with no extra process) and upload it into Take payment to debit from payers’ account
