You are a new PM at Google Pay. Design a feature for paying credit card bills.

First, I want to understand what the value of this feature would be. In my mind, there are two outcomes here:

1. Increased user dependence on Google Pay, thus making it the payment method of choice for multiple use cases , which in turn leads to additional data on users payments so we can recommend relevant products and services 

2. New revenue stream from credit card bill payments (we receive transaction fees)

Next, I want to define the user journey of paying credit card bills today and where some pain points lie. 

User Journey Today: 

Sign up for credit card --> Create/register account --> login to account --> Set up payment preferences including checking/payment account information, automatic payments, and paperless billing --> Log back in to review payments are being completed 

Pain points: 

Solutions: 

The first two options would have the most impact on the user's pain points. While the first option is certainly low hanging fruit and where we should start, I would want to dig deeper into the second option because I think it uniquely addresses the issue (pain point 4) where users can centrally manage the payments they have going out for their credit cards.

Here is a picture of what this could look like:  (unable to upload picture so described below)

User Journey for MVP:

Navigate to Google Pay app--> Link accounts by signing into your existing credit card accounts --> For each account select preferred payment amount (Balance or other amount) --> View dashboard which lists Credit Card Name, Last Payment Amount & Date, Next Payment Date and Current Balance --> User can edit information on card (i.e. change payment amount)

This feature would have the most impact on the outcomes listed at the outset of this exercise. There is strong potential for user dependence on our service if they could centrally manage their credit card bill payments with Google Pay. In addition, the user is likely to link more of their credit cards through the dashboard. There are some obvious concerns I would want to dig into, however. For example, users would also ideally need to have accounts registered with their credit cards for this to work, although it would still save time in setting up payments for each account. In addition, early adoption may be at risk given that users often use their existing accounts with their credit card company to manage statements and review purchases etc. 

You are a new PM at Google Pay. Design a feature for paying their credit card bills.

1. Clarify:
   1. Here we are trying to design a feature that helps Google Pay users to pay their credit card bills
   2. Assumptions user is already a member of Google Pay with atleast one bank details registered with Google Pay
2. User flow for using a credit card:
   1. User applies and get a credit card from a bank
   2. Use the credit card to do transactions for shopping, restaurants, bills etc
   3. Every credit card has a billing period which is generally monthly
   4. End of billing period customers get a credit statement mentioning amount dues and due date
   5. A person needs do the following before due date
      1. Pay minimum balance to maintain the card
      2. Pay entire due amount to avoid extra interest
3. Users of the feature that we are going to build;
   1. Primary users: Are any customers using the credit card who is also a GPay user
   2. Secondary: Banks: Need to setup a tie up with banks for GPay to accept payment for the cards
   3. Secondary: Credit Card company: Visa, Mastercard, Diners etc
4. User needs:
   1. User needs to be able to register their card with the app
   2. User needs to see all card details within the GPay App
   3. User needs to have a secure and encrypted transaction experience
   4. User needs to be notified to be able to raise a request to pay the credit card bill
   5. User needs to be continually reminded to pay the bill before the due date to avoid penalty
   6. Users needs to be able to make a payment to the bank
   7. Tie up with Banks/Credit card companies to enable the financial gateway to lead to credit card payment
   8. Users wants to be able to get an handle on the monthly credit card expenses to ensure financial wellbeing
   9. User want a seamless way to to able to pay the credit card bill with minimum interactions or standing instructions
5. Solutions and Prio:
   1. [MUST HAVE] Work with banks/credit card companies to bring in as many partners on to the platform in the backend [P0]
   2. [MUST HAVE] All transactions happenning through teh app must be encrypted and secure with two factor authentication along with OTP through mobile number [P0]
   3. Create a new section to register credit cards within Gpay
      1. Enter one time credit card details within the app along with expiry date, ccv and other details [P0]
      2. Ask user to enter the due date and monthly billing cycle for the card [P0]
      3. Sync directly with the bank or credit card companies to fetch the due date and billing cycle automatically [P1]
      4. Give the option to use phone camera to automatically scan a card and fill in the details [P2]
   4.  Feature to select a card and pay the bill
      1. Select a card and option to pay from registered bank account. Amount to be paid can be manually entered by the usere [P0]
      2. Selecting a card auto populates minimum balance and total outstanding to the card. Select teh pay the same [P1]
   5. Automatic push notification for the user when teh bill is generated for the month. Frequency of notification can increase just before due date. [P1]
   6. Automatic bill payment for selected credit cards [P2]
      1. User can select cards for automatic bill payments
      2. Notify users when users bank acccount is below the amount to be paid and override the standing instructions
      3. User decides next steps
   7. Create a expense analytics tab for tracking monthly expenses [P3]
      1. Scan through credit card bills to automatically categorize expenses into sections like grocery, shopping, restaurant etc. based on pre-trained ML models
      2. Create a expense report to make users aware of which category maximum spending is happening
      3. Show month on month trends and derive insights to inform if users are seeing uptick in non-esssential expenses
   8. Success Metrics:
      1. Broad metrics: like DAU and MAU for this new features can give us a sense of how the product is being adopted. 
      2. Adoption metrics: Users that added atleast one credit card to the platform
      3. Adoption metrics: Total no. of credit card bill payment on platform
      4. Engaement metrics: Credit card bill payment per user
      5. Churn metric: Credit cards unregistered %

To answer this product design question as a whole, start by addressing the following:

Why design an experience for people to pay CC bills using G-Pay? 

• Fragmented experience
  • customers typically have multiple CCs
  • they have to go to multiple websites to pay these bills
  • different CCs have different due dates 
  • different passwords to access CC websites 
• Consumers navigate away from Google properties to pay CC bills 

• Increase revenue by better ad targeting 
• Increase the engagement of existing users of G-Pay by offering them more features
• Acquire new users to the G-Pay ecosystem 

• Existing google customers
  • Have google login
  • Search
    • use search to navigate to merchant bank to pay cc bills
  • Gmail
    • get bill pay notifications in email 
  • Customers who have never used google products before
    • Don't have a google login
• Merchant Banks
  • Amex, Citi, etc 
• Merchants who accept G-Pay
  • Websites

• Gmail users see an ad for G-Pay if they have a CC bill pay email 
  • Google already has ads infra to support this use case
  • Detect a CC bill pay confirmation email, and display G-Pay ads for these users
• User clicks on ad and navigates to G-Pay specific page
  • Add Credit Cards
  • See CC Statements for One CC
    • Current Statement
    • Past Statements
    • Filter statements by date
  • See Payment due date
  • Connect Bank to make payment
  • Payment Amount
    • Pay Full amount
    • Pay min 
    • Other Amount
    • See interest if paying < full amount 
  • Main G-Pay CC Dashboard
    • Lists all CCs
    • Current Statement amount due
    • Due date 
    • One-click Pay 
    • Pay all CC button
• Integration with G Calendar 
  • Once a CC has been onboarded into G-Pay
  • User should be prompted if they want to integrate with G-Cal
  • Automatically create Payment reminders in G-Cal on the day payment is due
• Chrome Plugin for one-tap cc bill payment
  • Can be default plugin in chrome
  • User sees G-Cal reminder
  • Clicks on G-Pay chrome plugin
    • plugin has list of CCs with pay button next to them
    • one click pay 
  • User can set preferences for plugin
    • always pay full amount or min 
    • default pay all CCs or just one, etc. 

• Add CC/see statements/ connect bank/make payments
• G-Pay ads based on existing cc activity 

• Calendar integration 
• Chrome plugin 

• CTR on gmail ads
• # of cc bill payments made 
• NPS (If users love this and it solves their problem, they will refer friends and thus Google will acquire more users)

Goals for Google Pay: 1. Total transaction volume 2. Total number of transactions (daily, weekly, monthly) trends 3. Total number of transactions/DAU. I am thinking Google Pay is a daily used product as people tend to purchase something or the other on a daily basis. 

Clarifying questions - 

Timeline for launch: is it in weeks or months?

Number of dev resources: are there very limited resources? 

Pain points: 

1. People have multiple credit cards and paying one at a time is a pain

2. Each card is on a different payment schedule and remembering is a pain 

3. People have goals and implicitly make decisions how much to pay per credit card so that they don't underpay or overpay while balancing the interest rates 

4. People tend to weight paying credit card bills against credit score esp. if they are in the market buying for a home or a car

5. People are social creatures. They want to how much they spend compared to people similar like them 

Prioritization of features: 

Riskiest assumption: credit card companies are willing to provide API access to Google Pay to be able to pull information and pay the bills. The prioritization is assuming that we have de-risked that.

Clarifying Questions:

1. is it for Google finance credit card or for stored credit card in Google Pay?

2. Does Google even have access to due payments with different credit card providers?

3. Is Google willing to spend extra money to reward the users or wants to use social incentive/rewards?

Assumption: it's for different credit card providers and there is way to get the due payments

Product: 

• Google Pay is used for online and offline shopping to pay bills against purchased goods, credit card bills etc.
• allows users to store their credit card information for fast and easy payments without having to fill in the information again
• it also offer its users finance credit card from synchrony bank
• Key value proposition: faster and easy payment

User Persona:

• Shoppers - in-app purchases, creadit card bills, market place purchases, offline shopping with merchants
• Merchants - easy payment and can use Google pay as another mechanism to remind their customers for due payments

Needs and Pain Points:

• large number of cards and Need constant reminders to pay their bills in-time - some may apply automated scheduled payments of the banks (Ask interviewer whether this direction need to be thought about or not, for this problem, I'm focussing on this as well)
• no added incentive to pay before date - they utilize full length of the credit available duration

Use Cases:

1. User need a way to know how much they owe to which credit card
2. User need a way to know the due date for payment to a given credit card
3. User need a single place to pay all their credit card bills so they dont have to go to different bank websites/ apps
4. User need notification/ reminder to pay their bills
5. User need scheduling of their payments and expect Google to automatically reject if they dont have the required funds
6. User need incentive/ reward to pay their bills for +ve reinforcement
7. User need a history of their rewards and a total value of their rewards
8. User need a way to redeem their rewards

1. we need api's from credit card banks to solve for use case #1-#5
2. If all the api's are not available, we can atleast get the credit standing of a user and use it for rewards for use cases #5-8
3. we can think of showing payment due and due date for every credit card saved along with its own in the existing UI
4. we can insert a payment due notification message on the confirmation page with every payment made by G-Pay
5. We can insert a call to action both in #2 and #3 to pay now or pay later
6. Pay Now can be single click immediate scheduling of the amount due from the bank account stored
7. Pay Later can allow users to define a schedule to pay the bill for credit card bank
8. For use case #5-8, we need to build new feature in G-Pay app or website to show, redeem, view history of the rewards
9. Credit reward points for every credit card payment in time and remove them when someone redeem them
10. We can think of giving credits in the form of free online Google Drive storage, ad-free minutes of You Tube etc.
11. Show users with a catalog of rewards to choose from to redeem their points
12. Adjust the reward points with every transaction and show them appropriately

I'd summarize this at the end for the interviewer with my pain points we are trying to solve for, use cases we have in mind and what would I consider for MVP vs what can come in later.