the challenge

Nedbank would like to introduce a bill payments feature for existing users who pay bills on a regular basis and integrate this feature into their digital banking suite.

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the solution

Design a bill payments feature to serve as a broader retention strategy aimed at incentivising the 3 million Nedbank app users and leveraging off strategic partnerships to reward customers.

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research

Use the proposed concept put forward from business as a foundation to create alignment between business needs and user needs

Research has shown that 60% of users in South Africa prefer to pay their bills manually, primarily due to fears of making errors or duplicate payments, especially when using debit orders. This insight raised an important design question: how might we address these concerns and shift user behaviour toward a more trusted, flexible digital alternative? ‍

To begin answering that, I collaborated closely with the delivery team to define a design approach that balanced technical feasibility with user experience. From a technical perspective, the bill payments feature required multiple third-party integrations, many of which were managed by a separate product team. This made early alignment across stakeholders critical to ensure the final design worked within system constraints without compromising usability.

One of the key artefacts used to support this alignment was an information architecture (IA) diagram. It helped map the proposed navigation and content structure of the bill payments feature within the Nedbank app, while also enabling the technical team to identify integration points and system dependencies.

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Next, we ran design workshops with our business stakeholders to shape the onboarding experience and explore how we could better educate users on the value of the new bill payments feature. Research shows that bill payments rounds off the top 3 of digital goods and services in South Africa, making up 10% of South Africa's Value-Added Services market. Given this behaviour, it was essential to clearly differentiate bill payments from existing methods like debit orders, and to position it as a more flexible and user-controlled option.

The workshop helped us align around a core message that could resonate with users—focusing on control, ease of use, and the emotional satisfaction of settling bills. This exercise also created strong alignment between business goals and user needs, and provided a foundation for crafting the onboarding and education strategy.

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Main insight

Through workshops with business stakeholders, we identified three key value propositions for the bill payments feature: control, flexibility, and transparency. These became the foundation for how we would approach the design solution.

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design and final results

I used feedback and findings from workshops as foundation for the design.

The research gathered from business provided enough insights for us to commence on designing the solution. This phase of the design process began with creating a number of different iterations of the design, testing these with actual users to ultimately playback our findings to stakeholders. Below are insights I gathered as part of user testing with users:

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Findings from the user testing provided us with valuable clues as to how to better educate our users. I bucketed the insights from our user testing session and assessed these according to Peter Morville's 7 principles of design, namely usefulness, desirability, accessibility, credibility, findability, usability, and value-impact. Working alongside a UX writer, we then crafted the final screens below for the onboarding:

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final result‍

Research conducted outside of this project found that 42% of South Africans preferred to pay for their bills using a banking app. This bill payments therefore represented a meaningful revenue opportunity for Nedbank. Our design approach had to meet this business goal while also aligning to the value proposition of the feature. The final experience reflects this balance. It provides users with multiple ways to pay their bills—whether once-off, automatically, or via scheduled reminders—and clearly distinguishes the process from debit orders. Each screen was designed to give users clarity, confidence, and choice in how they manage their payments.

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Reflection

A key learning I took from working on this project is that strategic alignment early in the process reduces downstream friction. By visualising the IA clearly and involving cross-functional teams early, we not only solved for UX, but also enabled smoother dev handoff and reduced ambiguity.