Mobile payments has been gaining momentum in China to the point where it's ubiquitous to shopping. In fact, China is moving towards a cashless society — and the preferred payment type is mobile for customers and merchants of all sizes because of its convenience and security. Outside of China, mobile payments has been slower to catch on. Alipay and WeChat Pay (Alipay's archnemesis) customers are accustomed to a paying through a bank card for mobile transactions in China. However, the payment flow in the U.S. is different and goes through the Blackhawk processing network. Essentially in the US, Chinese visitors can pay for items via their Alipay mobile app by purchasing the merchant egift and using the QR code generated to complete the transaction. This is a clunkier flow than what exists in China, and adds to the fun of this design challenge.
The design goal here was two folded. First, with the Alipay customer, create a seamless in-store mobile payments experience. Second, with the U.S. retailer, create a co-branded experience that features both Alipay and the merchant equally. To get here, I went through the entire design process— used quantitative and qualitative data for research, created user flows/wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, tested, designed concepts for our partnership buy-ins, and more.
Reach out to me if you’ll like to get a deep-dive of this project.