New Payment Methodology SA
Led the national rollout of a new real-time payments mechanism to 1.2 million pre-registered customers, aligning teams across the business and shaping industry-wide fraud and adoption standards alongside South Africa's payments regulator.
Leverage the introduction of a new real-time payment method in South Africa to redesign the Online Payments experience, activate a base of 1.2 million pre-registered customers, and reassert the Bank's leadership in payments usability.
Business Problem
In South Africa, cash usage exceeds global norms, contributing to higher rates of financial fraud. As one of the institutions introducing this new payment mechanism to the country, the Bank carried responsibility not only for its own onboarding experience but for helping define fraud safeguards, adoption behaviour, and payment messaging standards for the market as a whole, all while activating 1.2 million already pre-registered customers without a coordinated go-live plan in place.
Approach
Applied a service design approach to support the rollout of a real-time payments product to a base of 1.2 million pre-registered customers. Activities included stakeholder interviews, journey mapping, and blueprinting across a wide internal coalition spanning the call centre, marketing, group communications, the online marketing website, risk, governance, legal, and compliance. In parallel, as the mechanism was new to the country, we represented the Bank in regular working sessions with the Payment Association of South Africa, the national transaction switch (BankservAfrica), and the regulator to identify emerging fraud cases and align on ideal customer experience, adoption approach, and payment messaging standards. Designed segmented client journeys, facilitated design sprints, and developed launch strategies, embedding continuous improvement through FMEA, KPI definition, and reporting.
Customer, Colleague and Market Research
Identified and engaged cross-functional stakeholders across call centre, marketing, group communications, risk, governance, legal, and compliance to uncover colleague pain points through targeted interviews. Conducted multiple rounds of exploratory research and usability testing, generating both market and customer insights that directly informed product design and process improvements across sales, support, technical, and operational teams.
Activating 1.2 Million Pre-Registered Customers
With 1.2 million customers already pre-registered for the new payment mechanism ahead of launch, we designed the segmented activation and communication journey needed to convert registration into active usage at scale, coordinating closely with marketing, group communications, and the online marketing website team on messaging sequencing, channel timing, and call centre readiness.
Industry Collaboration on Fraud, Adoption and Messaging Standards
As this was a new payment mechanism being introduced to the country, we held regular working sessions with the Payment Association of South Africa, the national transaction switch (BankservAfrica), and the regulator. These sessions surfaced emerging fraud cases across the industry and shaped agreement on the ideal customer experience, adoption approach, and payment messaging standards adopted across the market.
Journey Mapping with Mini-Ideations to Determine the Proposed Migration Flow
We carefully delineated several key journeys pertaining to various product features, encompassing perspectives from customers, colleagues, and service providers. Furthermore, we facilitated 5-day design sprints to generate innovative ideas for our proposed new payment flows.
Service Blueprinting
Constructed and validated service blueprints through virtual workshops, segmenting them by client tranche to align with migration phases. Implemented an archiving system for version control. Prepared targeted discussion points to drive critical decisions, using an engagement matrix to manage follow-ups and ensure efficient stakeholder alignment throughout the release cycle.
Launch Plan and Change Management
Developed a coordinated launch strategy aligning business activities, communications, and client initiatives for seamless product rollout across the full internal coalition. Created value proposition canvases to shape a customer-centric launch concept, focusing on delivering personalised payment insights to drive engagement and adoption.
Testing, Feedback and Continuous Improvements
Collaborated with process engineers to conduct FMEA, enabling quality assurance and technical teams to define robust test scenarios. Mapped KPIs across key customer and colleague journey steps, and developed tailored dashboards for each product function to support launch readiness. Despite being manual, dashboards were well-received for their clear business value.
