Modernizing a global payments infrastructure.

Client

Google

Industry

Payments

Role

Product Design

The Google Payments team focuses on making payments simple, secure, and seamless, handling money movement between Google and its users and businesses.

Engagement Overview

While embedded (2 years) on the Payments team, Google was revamping their payment strategies. Rather than allowing each product to handle payments independently, resulting in a disjointed and erratic user experience and repetitive functions throughout the organization, Google was taking steps towards unifying all payments to a common infrastructure.

30+ individual Forms of Payment are used in every product and service, in every country Google does business in, on devices ranging from old to new, on desktop, native and mobile UIs.

30+ individual Forms of Payment are used in every Google product and service, in every country Google does business in, on devices ranging from old to new, on desktop, native and mobile UIs.

Audit and Planning.

To wrap our heads around the scope and breadth of the task we began with a thorough audit of the current global payments landscape for all products and services, noting in particular the specific regulatory and cultural differences.

Payment Locations

European Union
Australia
Israel
Mexico
Argentina
Brazil
South Korea
Taiwan
Japan
India

We found:

All Forms of Payment (FoP) could be categorized by how each is authorized for use:

•

Auth-able

Immediate authorization and use

•

Electronic-Auth

Separate and explicit user authorization required

•

Redirect

Employs a 3rd-party to authorize

•

Receipt

No authentication required

And that all forms of payment existed in four primary states:

•

Add

•

Edit / Delete

•

Verification

•

Display for use in product UIs

Payment Scenarios and Use Cases

We then defined 14 use scenarios across all contexts and form factors that covered where and how users encounter a payment experience and then further distilled those into 5 primary use cases.

From this we able to create a flexible and easy to follow formula for product managers and developers to follow when integrating new payment options.

We then defined 14 use scenarios across all contexts and form factors that covered where and how users encounter a payment experience and then further distilled those into 5 primary use cases.

From this we able to create a flexible and easy to follow formula for product managers and developers to follow when integrating new payment options.

Context

(Standalone or Embedded UI)

Form Factor

(Web, mWeb, Native)

Use Case

(Add, Edit, Sign up & Buy)

Applying the solution

Working from this conceptual framework we then defined specific flows for each FoP category and with the Content Strategy team reworked all UI language and messaging in line with Google editorial, brand and legal standards.

A full suite of components and guidelines for each Flow and User Scenario were then created enabling development teams to deploy any payment type in a consistent and effective and compliant manner.

Outcomes

Providing easy, clear, consistent and compliant experiences for all Google payments users is a win for everyone.

Product teams no longer have to be experts in payments, the Payments team could ensure greater compliance and more efficient deployment, all while giving users a fresh, consistent and easy to use payments experience regardless of the product or their location.

Providing easy, clear, consistent and compliant experiences for all Google payments users is a win for everyone.