The Challenge
My Role
Goals
Design
Outcome
Learnings

Designing for Trust and Compliance

Simplifying identity verification to meet new standards and enhance user trust.

Outcome

Delivered a streamlined identity verification process that maintained conversion rates, built trust with users, and provided a foundation for personalization

Skills

  • Product design
  • Workshop facilitation
  • Product strategy
  • Stakeholder management
  • Interactive prototyping
  • User research & testing

Team

  • Product Design
  • Engineering
  • Product Management
  • Compliance

Platform

Web

Timeline

3-4 months

Context

Know Your Customer (KYC) is a fundamental regulatory requirement in the fintech industry, designed to prevent fraud, combat money laundering, and ensure compliance with financial laws. Despite its importance, KYC processes are often lengthy and tedious, leading to user frustration and high drop-off rates.

The Challenge

Anticipating evolving KYC regulations across Xero’s global markets, we faced an urgent deadline to comply with the Australian Tax Office's (ATO) new guidelines.

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This required us to:

  • Verify businesses against reliable sources.
  • Validate the contact details of all new customers during the product registration and purchase process.

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The key challenge was to implement this with minimal disruption to user experience and conversion rates.

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My role

As the Lead Product Designer, I collaborated with a cross-functional team to drive the design process and strategy.

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My responsibilities included:

  • Facilitating ideation workshops with stakeholders and impacted teams.
  • Creating a detailed journey map of the entire product.
  • Designing user interfaces, prototypes, and the research and validation strategy.
  • Ensuring a user-centric approach while meeting business objectives.

Goals

Business goals

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  • Achieve regulatory compliance with minimal impact on conversion rates.
  • Leverage the collected data to tailor Xero’s products and services to better meet customer needs.

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User goals

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  • Enhance trust and security by protecting user data and business identities from fraud.
  • Deliver a personalised, streamlined experience that saves users time and effort

Constraints & limitations

  • Short timeline.
  • Integration of complex third-party services.
  • Adapting to evolving regulatory requirements.

Design process

Strategy

We redefined our compliance-driven obligation into a mission: “Get to Know Our Customers Better.”

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This approach aimed to transform every data point collected into an opportunity to deepen trust and deliver value.

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Principles

  • Breaking Down Data Collection: 
We distributed data collection across the onboarding journey, only requesting information when it was contextually relevant, reducing user fatigue.
  • Speaking the User’s Language:
Clear, user-friendly instructions explained why specific data was being requested, fostering transparency and trust.

Australian Business Number Search Function

When all participants from the user testing sessions confidently and quickly selected 'yes' and found their ABN. There was a positive response to the various search methods and extra details to confirm their ABN.

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  • Some participants asked if it was plugged into the ATO.
  • All participants understood that their ABN details were public information.
  • All participants were aware of their registered business name vs their trading name.
  • All participants had quick access to their own ABN.

Mobile SMS Verification

The majority of participants in the user testing session expressed that SMS verification was a positive and easy step, which they had all used with other services.

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All participants did not hesitate to input their phone number.

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However during the live experiment we discovered

  • Some customers didn't have access to an Australian number to verify
  • Some customers may have had trouble receiving the code
  • Some customers may have only access to a landline

To reduce the impact and risk to the buy flow conversion, SMS verification was reassessed and relocated to later part of the journey post-conversion.

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Validation

‍Measuring impact and risk

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  • Round 1: Qualitative Research:
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We conducted 1:1 interviews with prototypes to identify pain points and refine the solution before development.
  • Round 2: Quantitative Validation:

    ‍    We ran live A/B experiments to measure conversion impact across 8,654 users.

Results

User interviews

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  • Users were comfortable entering their ABN as it aligned with standard practices.
  • The business search feature and extra data points were positively received.
  • SMS verification was seen as easy and familiar.

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Live Experiment

  • Conversion rates remained stable with no significant drop-offs, demonstrating minimal impact.
  • The flow aligned well with existing user expectations

Outcome

The project resulted in a compliant and intuitive identity verification process that had a neutral impact on conversion rates.

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Additionally, it set a clear vision for building stronger relationships with users by delivering a personalised, efficient, and trust-building experience.

Learnings

Learnings 1

Combine Qualitative and Quantitative Insights

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Strategically integrating user interviews and live experiments creates a compelling narrative that informs confident decision-making.

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Learnings 2

Not All Friction Is Bad

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Introducing small, intentional friction points, like business verification, can reinforce user commitment and instil trust, akin to signing a contract.

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Learnings 3

Co-Creation with Stakeholders

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Using an open opportunity solution tree facilitated alignment, transparency, and inclusiveness, enabling quick pivots and stronger stakeholder buy-in.

Next case study

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