Redesigning & Streamlining PayPal’s Fraud Prevention Tool for Merchants.
A dual-pronged initiative to streamline the merchant onboarding experience and redesign the fraud prevention tool’s UI to improve usability, reduce churn, and increase merchant confidence in fraud protection.
UX Design
Product Strategy
User Research
Client
PayPal
Role
Senior UX Designer
Challenges
Onboarding woes
As merchants onboarded, a few friction points emerged where they struggled to choose the appropriate fraud prevention tool, while some were even unaware of multiple offerings. The process was laden with technical jargon, rigid workflows, and a lack of real-time feedback, leading to abandonment.
Usability gaps in the tool
Even for those who completed onboarding, interacting with the tool was cumbersome. Inconsistency in use of color leading to negative correlation of data representation. Critical actions were buried, the UI didn’t align with evolving PayPal design standards, and accessibility fell short.
Success goals
Empowered
Merchants
Clear
Fraud insights
Frictionless
Onboarding
Streamlined
Decisions
Enhanced
Usability
Smart
Fraud choices
Approach
Strategy
It became clear that solving one of these wouldn’t be enough. We needed a holistic revamp by fixing onboarding and optimizing the core tool in tandem.
Upon conducting an accessibility audit, I uncovered key areas needing immediate attention, from contrast issues to keyboard navigability gaps. But rather than just applying patches, I championed a redesign endeavor, ensuring that both onboarding and the tool’s core experience evolved cohesively.
I structured the work into parallel pipelines, allowing new features to roll out without disrupting existing merchant workflows. This ensured a seamless transition for new users while making old merchants happy by introducing changes without forcing them to relearn the system overnight.
Learn
Identify key merchant pain points in onboarding, fraud setup, and risk management to improve workflow clarity and efficiency.
Discover
Develop new design strategies with guided flows, accessible UI enhancements, and modular components to improve scalability.
Testing
Test improved onboarding flows, fraud option clarity, and accessibility features through real-world scenarios and user feedback.
Impact and outcomes
Adoption & satisfaction boost
More merchants successfully completed onboarding without external support, and existing users found fraud rule configurations clear and far easier to manage.
Technical harmony
Redesigned the UI framework to align with PayPal’s custom React component library, improving scalability, future compatibility, and reducing technical debt.
Relationships
I collaborated with stakeholders to align measurable UX outcomes with key business goals, such as reducing merchant churn and increasing revenue through improved fraud prevention experiences.
Leadership
I influenced priorities to focus on core experience enhancements, addressing usability gaps and improving onboarding flows to drive merchant adoption and meet business objectives.
Work
Reimagining transactions.
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