Case Study
Fraud Controls for SMB Banking
Empowering business owners with simple tools to block unauthorized ACH transactions and protect their accounts.
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Overview
Managing ACH Fraud
Bluevine is financial technology company building better banking solutions for growing businesses by providing the attention, funding and financial tools they deserve. With the aim to offer an industry-leading fintech platform with robust security, we were tasked with launching a suite of ACH fraud controls tools to empower business owners to maintain tighter control over who can draw funds from their accounts. This project had four primary phases:
Problem and Opportunity
Ask ourselves "How might we create ACH debit controls that are dead-simple to use, quick to setup, and provide the level of control and security required by business owners?"
Research and Interview
Compare competitors' experience and interview business owners to understand their day-to-day experience with ACH debits, fraud protection and resolution.
Explore and Iterate
Iterate on possible design approaches and test these with stakeholders and customers.
Refine, Ship and Evaluate
Refine the fraud control experience, collaborate with R&D to develop, validate, and ship feature suite, and evaluate the impact of the feature.
Problem and Opportunity
We identified three primary pain points for both Bluevine's business and customers when dealing with unauthorized ACH transactions.
1.
Time-consuming Resolutions
Customer support spent excessive hours manually investigating and resolving potential ACH fraud, hindering efficiency.
2.
Financial Risk
Unresolved fraudulent transactions led to financial losses for Bluevine, impacting profitability.
3.
Customer Dissatisfaction
The slow resolution process risked frustrating customers and damaging their trust in Bluevine's security. Additionally, this is a feature offered by many business banking solutions.
With the pain points identified, we outlined the opportunity to solve for through our design of the ACH fraud controls.
How might we create ACH debit controls that are dead-simple to use, quick to setup, and provide a level of control and security required by business owners?
Research and Interview
We took an initial inventory of our assumed user needs and explored various ways of structuring these within the platform. We then interviewed small business owners to gain deeper insights and test if our proposed feature set aligned with their expectations.
Collecting and outlining possible feature set and architecture based on our assumptions for user expectations and accessibility.
Interviewing small business owners. Amy, owner of a local pizzeria and Ken, owner of a music store and school.
Explore and Iterate
I iterated on various design approaches that prioritized simplicity, and clarity while allowing granular control. While iterating, I gathered initial feedback from stakeholders and ensured the feature was easy to discover without disrupting the flow of more frequent or critical user actions.
Refine, Ship and Evaluate
After refining the designs for the fraud controls feature, we shipped the following designs publicly to all Bluevine customers:
We first launched the feature to a focused group of beta customers to test the adoption and gather feedback. We then launched the feature to all customers and measured the adoption of feature capabilities within the first two weeks.
0%
adoption of features with targeted beta customers in first two weeks
0%
of total customers configured controls within first two weeks of GA
Recommendations
Here's what my teammates at Bluevine had to say about our work together on this project:
Douglas is an exceptional product designer whose work consistently exemplifies a deep commitment to customer-centric design. I wholeheartedly recommend Douglas to any design team looking to take their team to the next level.
William Levinson
Product Lead, Bluevine
After meeting Douglas, I was so impressed with his aptitude that I made a position for him on my team. He's equal parts creative and pragmatic, and a pleasure to work with. Great attitude, owns his projects, and brings a unique viewpoint. 10/10, would hire again.
Tim Resudek
Sr. Design Director, Bluevine