Outcome

A streamlined, secure payments platform for property lawyers

I worked on the design of PropertyPay 2.0, a platform for property lawyers to manage all payments for property transactions in a secure, unified environment. The platform allows lawyers to invite their clients, handle transactions, and streamline the payments process. It’s an end-to-end solution that ensures both lawyers and their clients can manage property payments and the foreign exchange transfers involved more efficiently and securely.

Key challenges

Control, costs and security

The traditional process of buying and selling property in Spain involves numerous manual payments, causing inefficiencies, security issues, and unnecessary costs. Property lawyers manage these payments using a fragmented combination of bank transfers, CRMs, and spreadsheets. The goal was to create PropertyPay 2.0, a secure platform that enables property lawyers to manage all their clients’ property payments seamlessly, eliminating the need for traditional bank drafts and reducing excessive fees.

Research and Discovery

Making sense of the opportunity

Macro-level Research:

I drafted a service ecosytem to visualise the range of PropTech service that come into play through the customer lifecycle of buying and selling a property.

• Conducted competitor analysis of PropTech services across USA, Europe, and Australia
• Mapped the current landscape and identified ‘best in class’ in the markets
• By understanding the strengths of both full-suite solutions and niche providers, we could use best practises to baseline our ideas

Meso-level Lawyer Insights:

I recruited a new Lead UX researcher and with the Product owner we conducted meetings and interviews to refine the product offering.

• Interviewed Spanish lawyers and conveyancing professionals
• Created detailed customer journey maps highlighting critical pain points
• Identified opportunities for improving the payments experience

Micro-level Design and initial validation:

I moved to the design phase, co-creating high fidelity wireframes to develop a clear understanding of user needs.

• Used early feedback to identify improvements to the experience
• Developed user flows and wireframes based on identified pain points and MVP requirements
• Tested prototypes with prospective users from the existing Currencies Direct client base

UX Design

Purposeful design

Throughout the project, I worked closely with the Product Owner, visual/UI designers, and developers to iterate and refine the design. Together, we created high-fidelity mockups using Figma, which were used for prototyping and user testing. Final iterations for handover to development team were then created by the visual/UI designers.

Learnings

‘Game changing’

By working closely with a select group of prospective users, we were able validate the PropertyPay product with them. Some viewed the PropertyPay product as a ‘game changer.’

The property lawyers could see the benefits of having one platform which could manage the property payments process, streamlining the current ad hoc combination of CRMs and spreadsheets.

The buyer and the sellers were happy to have a secure PropertyPay account to manage all their FX payments for the property transaction. By not having to use the traditional Spanish banks they were able to avoid additional fees and costs.