OVERVIEW
Being a bank as well as a payment processor Wirecard was in a unique position to offer loans to Merchants who were already using their services. The large amount of data about the merchants and their transactions and sales would help Wirecard to decide the eligibility and size of the loan for individual merchants. The goal was to design an in-app loan application for existing merchants of Wirecard.
Wirecard’s goal was to become the most intelligent commerce platform for merchants. To keep up with this strategy and to help our merchants, the lending business was conceived. The idea was to help merchants request a loan and receive the money in their bank accounts through Wirecard’s applications. We wanted to bring transparency, trust, and ease of use to the new feature which was being introduced.
Due to the amount of time and resources available, only a desk research was conducted for this project. To begin with, I started with finding out how the loan process happens in a conventional bank. Similar products offered by Paypal were looked into and various forums were researched to figure out any drawbacks and assess feedback. .We made a customer journey and aligned with all the stakeholders.
Once a customer journey was designed. Every point of the journey was closely examined and we debated the best mode of communication for the customer during each step. Inputs from marketing, sales, and service departments were taken into consideration here. The final journey on which we all agreed is shown above.
- One main challenge in the project was how to combine existing merchant data already in our old database with the new database which was being developed for the loan application.
- How do we ensure that all the legal formalities were being followed for the loan application. A lot of back and forth with our in-house legal team and the valuable inputs they provided helped us achieve this.
- We had to understand how to ensure that the whole process was transparent and all documents and status of the application was always available for the merchant and was communicated in two different channels.