Pomelo offers accounts receivable solutions—including invoicing, payment links, QR code payments, tap-to-pay, and point-of-sale options—to merchants in the UK and worldwide who process millions in daily transactions.
Problem statement
Pomelo merchants have disjointed and outdated pay-in and pay-out systems, using different platforms that create cash flow inefficiencies and lead to high operational costs. Before developing this product Pomelo only offered pay-in solutions.
Product vision
Pomelo aims to offer a closed-loop payment solution, enabling merchants to easily pay vendors and contractors using funds accumulated from their payment solutions.
Customers pay merchants and merchants can then use those funds to pay their suppliers which will create a closed loop payment solution.
When I joined the project, I noticed a misalignment between the Product Management team and the CEO on our objectives. To help I quickly began conceptualising and researching to align stakeholders and shape the product requirements towards our goals.
The final designs of the supply chain payments product is focused on helping the user understand the status of their accounts payables and help them make informed decisions.
To better understand the process involved for finance and operation teams to pay vendors, suppliers and contractors, I spent some time conducting interviews to understand their preferences, thoughts and feelings.
User (target audience)
Finance and Operations team of any merchant using the Pomelo platform.
Target clients
Businesses in industries (service-based or product-based) with a structured supply chain such as travel and construction.
After carrying out user interviews with our internal finance team, a potential client and existing clients, we established the following themes.
Highlight bills by priority
A finance team gets hundreds of invoices per month, so it's important to prioritise which ones they should handle first.
Manage roles & responsibilities
Assign payment responsibilities to each team member based on their specific roles and responsibilities.
Sync with Xero or Quickbooks
Automate the syncing of invoices from various accounting tools to save time.
Bulk paying of bills
Save time by paying multiple bills together instead of scheduling individual payments.
Breakdown balances and funds
Assist users in understanding fund allocation by providing information on available funds, scheduled payments, and pending payments.
The product design process began very early as the idea was conceptual and yet to be validated.
I used the design process to help the key stakeholders (CEO and Head of Product Management) shape the requirements, help the business understand the goal, and define how we plan to help the merchant pay suppliers.
Presenting merchants with a breakdown of the total amount owed to suppliers for a set timeframe.
View prototype →Breaking down the list of invoices into buckets based on the due date.
View prototype →Giving the merchants the ability to generate virtual cards to pay individual invoices or a supplier as card payments are more transparent than cross-border SWIFT payments.
View prototype →Deciding on a concept
Due to time constraints, I was only able to carry out usability test using Maze. After multiple user tests, we established that there were elements from each concept we wished to proceed with.
The user testing also helped define the product's name, which we decided to go with "Bills".
After carrying out ideation and user interviews with our internal finance team, a potential client and existing clients, we established the following themes.
Convenience ⏰
Automating accounts payables and reconciliation can significantly reduce the overheads for the merchant while helping them better plan.
Getting the job done 🧾
Bringing B2C payment experience to the B2B payments, with smooth and intuitive user journeys and better controls.
Transparency 🔦
Card payments are more transparent as once the payment is confirmed, there is a certainty of duration for receiving the funds for the supplier.
I used Principle to create an interactive prototype to demonstrate the interactions and allow our business development team to demo the product to potential clients.
If you are viewing on desktop, you can interact with this prototype by clicking around or view here.
Being involved in the project from the start was great as it really helped all the stakeholders involved come to a conclusion on what they wanted to achieve with the product.
My initial design process was integral to helping the business understand what direction to go in with their accounting payable solution.
The product was coming into it's final sprint for the MVP and is aimed to be released mid November 2022.
The success of the product will be determined on two key KPI; the number of scheduled payments and the number of expense transactions carried out on virtual cards.
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