Designing a simpler mobile payments experience at global scale
Organisation
HSBC
Role
Design Lead
Timeline
February 2022 - August 2023
Overview
The Payments Hub is a shared global experience for HSBC’s 40 million retail customers across 25 markets. It serves as the central dashboard for all payment features within the mobile app.
The goal was to simplify the experience, reduce friction and ensure consistency across markets while accommodating local needs. I led the design of the new hub from concept to implementation in the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, focusing on scalability, usability and localisation.
> Reduced task completion time by ~40%, enhancing user efficiency
> Improved jNPS score to an average of +55 for payments experience
Design strategy
UX research
Workshop facilitation
Concept design
User testing
The Challenge
Unifying fragmented experiences into a single, global framework
Over time, the HSBC app had become cluttered with duplicated features and inconsistent patterns. Simple tasks like paying a friend involved too many options and confusing entry points.
Our challenge was to create a unified payments experience that worked across markets — streamlining journeys, improving consistency and reducing friction while adapting to regional needs.
Existing payments hub experience across markets
Discovery
Understanding how people really think about payments
Working with a UX researcher, we studied payment behaviours across six markets to understand mental models and expectations. Despite local differences, the core behaviours were strikingly similar — most users thought about who they were paying, not how.
We validated ideas through card sorting and tree testing, refining the information architecture and identifying patterns that worked globally. These insights shaped the foundation for a new payments framework.
Payments reseach conducted in 6 key markets
Example of card sorting activity
Concept design
From complexity to clarity
To align global and regional teams, I led workshops and co-design sessions with product, business and design stakeholders. Together, we mapped market-specific journeys and agreed on a shared structure for the Payments Hub.
We established a modular framework built around three core areas: Payees, Payments and Payment management. This replaced an overwhelming overflow menu with a clear, intuitive layout that matched how users naturally think about payments.
Alignment with Hong Kong experience
Journey blueprint for domestic payments
Initial concept for information architecture
The solution
An international brand with a local experience
The new Payments Hub was designed as a flexible, modular system that balanced global consistency with local variation. We introduced a payee-first model that focused on who users were paying rather than how, supported by a new payee library that made managing and adding payees faster and more intuitive.
Working with the design system team, we created adaptable components and widgets so each market could configure the hub around its own infrastructure without losing cohesion. Using global journey blueprints, we simplified redundant flows and merged overlapping steps, resulting in a cleaner, faster and more consistent experience across markets.
Results
One global experience, endless impact
After launching in three markets, we saw significant improvements in both efficiency and satisfaction. The new hub reduced task completion time by 40%, improved jNPS scores to +55 and restored user trust in the payments experience.
The framework is now ready to be scaled to 22 additional markets, giving customers worldwide a simpler, faster and more consistent way to manage payments.
> 40%, faster task completion
> +55 jNPS across payments experience