OVERVIEW

Problem: Small, medium and large businesses need a secure, intelligent, and flexible way to manage pay-in and pay-out experiences across products, channels, markets, and customer journeys. Existing payment solutions often lack the configurability and portability needed to fit different operating models, integrate with existing ecosystems, scale with growth, and deliver the reliable, personalized experiences customers expect.

Solution: A modular embedded finance experience that simplified adoption through guided onboarding, configurable payment capabilities, transparent ownership, personalization, permission structures, and reusable workflows across pay-in, pay-out, PayFac, marketplace, and servicing experiences.

My Role: As Design Team Lead, I directed the experience strategy and end-to-end design of a zero-to-one embedded payments platform delivered within six months. I translated research with seven enterprise ISV clients into a modular product framework, guided four parallel workstreams, and aligned Product, Engineering, Legal, Risk, Operations, Research, and Business teams around customer needs, regulatory requirements, and launch-critical decisions.

Impact: My work supported more than 700 early onboardings across the United States, reduced partner drop-off by 20%, increased delivery velocity by 25%, shortened time to first transaction by 15%, and contributed approximately $1 million in business value. Research findings also informed the 2026 product roadmap and supported a broader $165 million growth initiative.

My scope included:

• Directing four parallel design workstreams from product definition through launch readiness, aligning priorities, dependencies, and delivery
• Guiding designers with clear strategic direction, helping the team navigate ambiguity, anticipate challenges, and stay ahead of evolving product needs
• Leading enterprise research with ISV clients to shape product direction around real customer needs and workflows
• Translating research into scalable product and experience architecture, defining modular workflows across onboarding, configuration, permissions, ownership, and payments
• Partnering with the Chase Design System team to establish reusable, portable patterns and components that reduced duplication and improved consistency across enterprise
• Aligning Product, Engineering, Legal, Risk, Operations, Research, and Business around customer needs, regulatory constraints, and launch-critical decisions

 

UX PROCESS

DISCOVERY

My immediate focus was understanding the embedded finance ecosystem from both the client and internal operating perspectives. I worked closely with product and research partners to understand how clients expected embedded solutions to work, what they needed to configure, where friction existed, and how responsibilities were understood across onboarding, payments, fees, ownership, and servicing.

Discovery helped me identify the deeper issue: the experience needed to support several connected audiences at once. 100% of platform owners (C1) needed configuration and control. Merchants (C2) needed clarity and trust. End customers (C3) needed seamless payment experiences.

To design effectively, I needed to understand the business and operational mechanics behind the experience. I spent significant time learning how the ecosystem actually worked, including delivery models, network charges, fee structures, pay-in and pay-out flows, PayFac models, marketplace relationships, and emerging opportunities like Pay by Bank.

Service blueprint 

Just as importantly, I mapped how responsibilities were distributed across Chase, platforms, merchants, and end customers. That gave me the domain context to make design decisions grounded not only in user needs, but also in how the business actually operates.

JTBD for C2 merchants 

Through discovery, I learned that competitors were already offering robust software and hardware ecosystems designed to help merchants run and grow their businesses.

That meant competing on features alone would not be enough. To differentiate and succeed, we needed a clear mission, a distinct value proposition, and a strong point of view on where Chase could provide unique value.

DEFINE

Our goal was to move from broad complexity into a clear mission and product structure. We needed to define who the experience served, what each user group needed, which workflows were universal, which workflows needed configuration, and where reusable components could reduce duplication.

I defined primary audiences across the ecosystem: platform users, merchants, business owners, Chase internal teams, and downstream customers. We mapped their responsibilities, needs, and decision points so the team could understand how each group interacted with the embedded finance experience.

A major shift happened during this phase. The work moved from a set of complex payment requirements into a modular experience framework.

I helped strengthen alignment between JPMorgan Chase’s embedded finance priorities and Chase small business opportunities by keeping the work grounded in reuse, scalability, and client needs. This created a foundation that could support sophisticated enterprise platforms while preparing the experience for broader adoption among small and medium businesses.

IDEATE

Then, my team and I explored how embedded finance capabilities could be presented in a way that felt clear, flexible, and scalable. We needed to support sophisticated enterprise platforms while also creating patterns that could eventually serve smaller businesses with less financial infrastructure knowledge.

I established the strategic structure, interaction patterns, and integration design direction across multiple workstreams, including onboarding, platform and merchant setup, pay-in and pay-out flows, PayFac, marketplaces, Pay by Bank, ownership, permissions, configuration, and internal servicing integrations.

The goal was to create a scalable and consistent experience framework that could connect these complex capabilities without making the ecosystem feel fragmented to clients or internal teams.

I guided the team to design around scalable modules and adaptive navigation patterns. The modular approach reduced one-off design decisions and created a more flexible experience foundation that could scale across enterprise platforms, marketplaces, ISVs, and growing businesses without reinventing the product each time.

Cross-functional workshops became a key part of ideation. These sessions helped teams evaluate concepts together, discuss constraints, identify risks, and align on what was feasible and valuable. They also created space for product, engineering, business, legal, risk, and operations partners to contribute earlier in the process, which reduced downstream rework.

TEST

My team and I used prototypes, stakeholder reviews, research insights, design critiques, and cross-functional working sessions to evaluate whether the experience direction was clear, usable, feasible, and aligned with business goals. I reviewed whether onboarding steps made sense to clients, whether configuration flows reduced confusion, whether payment capability groupings were logical, and whether ownership responsibilities were clear.

Research had already shown us that fees were a sensitive part of the experience, so one of the things I wanted to validate through testing was not just whether customers could understand the fees, but how the presentation of those fees affected their perception of the report.

Through testing, we learned that customers wanted fees to be clear and transparent, but they did not need them visually emphasized as a negative event. That insight informed the reporting pattern I designed.

Later, during an implementation review, I noticed deducted fees were being displayed in red. While that treatment made sense at an individual transaction level, it conflicted with what we had learned in testing. In an enterprise report, where fee totals can be significant, red placed disproportionate emphasis on the deduction and changed the way the information was perceived.

I brought the testing insight back to the team and used that evidence to influence design and business leaders to realign the implementation with the intended experience.

I also partnered with the Pay by Bank team to carry these learnings across integrations, ensuring the experience remained consistent as customers moved between different embedded finance capabilities.

This phase also helped build trust across stakeholders. Product leaders could see how design decisions connected to client needs and business goals. Engineering teams could evaluate feasibility earlier. Business and operations teams could see how the experience supported scale. Risk and legal partners could help ensure the product direction respected financial service requirements.

EXECUTE

My team and I refined workflows, improved information architecture, aligned patterns with the design system, clarified interaction details, and strengthened the final storytelling around the experience. By the end of this phase, the work was structured, scalable, and connected to a broader business strategy.

This process required strong coordination as several workstreams, including Chase SMB, Pay-by-Bank, and ISV, were moving in parallel. I helped establish a consistent design foundation, keep designers focused, and connect cross-functional partners to the right decisions. Once that foundation was in place, the framework became portable and adaptable for client co-branding, requiring close collaboration to balance both organizations’ brand guidelines, legal requirements, policies, and launch priorities.

JPMorgan Embedded Payments ISV co-branded experience 

JPMorgan Embedded Payments ISV and Pay-by-Bank co-branded experience 

IMPACT

Within six months, I empowered the team to deliver a zero-to-one embedded finance experience that supported expansion across the United States and Canada and enabled onboarding for 700+ early clients.

Together, we introduced a modular design approach that created reusable workflows and components, contributing approximately $1M in business value. This helped reduce duplicated effort across workstreams by giving teams clearer patterns for onboarding, configuration, ownership, and payment capability setup.