MasterPass
MasterPass was MasterCard Worldwide's premiere digital payment service. My time with the company was primarily spent redesigning the experience. I focused on the new user registration process, which was the largest consumer touchpoint. My work turned a 15 step process into a 3-5 step one. This resulted in a much smoother onboarding experience and raised signup rates around the globe.
I oversaw the design effort, providing guidance to the development teams, and assisted with numerous usability efforts. I delivered a straightforward and cohesive experience across product touch points.
MasterPass, as a brand, was retired in 2020.
Company
MasterCard
Year
~2016
Focus
Interactive Design
Tools
Sketch
A MasterPass button on partner websites launched the experience, kicking off with email entry.
Customer card information was the next important piece of data gathered.
I advocated for the introduction of a congratulatory "speed bump" at the end to help convey to users they created a reusable account.
A MasterPass button on partner websites launched the experience, kicking off with email entry.
PROBLEM
By the time I joined MasterCard, the MasterPass product had already soft-launched in a number of global markets. It had yet to fully launch in the US and Europe due to lack of partnership from banks and retailers.
Two of the largest issues facing the fledgling payment service were user adoption and repeat usage. The process to sign up for the service was 15 steps long. For users that made it through the sign up process, they often did not reuse the service a second time. Consistent customer use was minimal in all markets.
My main objective was to streamline the sign up procedure. So I got to work.
DISCOVERY & DESIGN
We already had a lot of data telling us that customers were abandoning the sign up flow. Working through 15 distinct steps to sign up for the service was too much.
My first order of business was pairing back the amount of data that we collected to the core. I redesigned the flow to capture only the most necessary information more smoothly. This effort got the process flow down to 3 pages (save for edge case data collection scenarios, which could result in 2 additional steps).
We tested the new flow thoroughly in the US and Europe, which were our next two key launch markets. Working hand in hand with our research team, I discovered that although we had trimmed a lot of steps from the flow, we were left with a new conundrum: users didn't know what they had just accomplished.
The assumption was that in order to use MasterPass again, they would need to go through the same 3 steps. Many users felt that was still a fair ask, given most online retailers asked the same information of them anyway. But they stated they would be just as likely to skip using MasterPass and simply put their information into the retailer site.
For us, this was a big problem. One of the key benefits of the service was that users explicitly did not need to give us their information every time. All they had to do was click the branded button (assuming cookies were enabled). At worst, they could click it and provide their email.
So I had the unenvious job of going back to management and explaining that - after all the hard work we did to get the flow down to 3 pages - we would need to add a page, effectively increasing the new flow by 33%. But I persisted and I prevailed.
After adding in what I called the "speed bump" page at the very end, users reported a massive shift in their understanding of what the service offered: a single click payment method they could use across retailers and backed by their bank. They got it.
DELIVERY
After rolling out the redesigned flow (with speed bump in tow), user abandonment plummeted and repeat use surged. Every market saw a huge spike in new sign ups and a similar one in repeat usage.
The turnaround in these numbers also helped MasterCard close partnerships with numerous banks and websites, offering customers even more places to use the service.
TAKEAWAYS
MasterPass was a really important learning opportunity for me. It was the first time in my career that I led the design of a product from beginning to end. It was also the first time I had to really dig into a problem and look beyond the surface-level details.
I had to work hard to discover what was truly causing issues and how to best deliver a solution that satisfied my users while accomplishing business goals. It is something I still think back on and use as a teaching opportunity for other designers solving similarly complex problems to this day.