Receiver Onboarding · Network Growth · Concept
Supplier Onboarding
Rethinking the password wall.
- Summary:
- When a business wants to pay a supplier electronically, it invites that supplier onto the platform's network. The supplier arrives with a single intent: to get paid. Yet the legacy flow asked them to create a password-protected account, complete MFA, and fill out a long business profile before they ever saw the payment waiting for them. This redesign flips that order — showing the incoming payment first and deferring account creation until after value is delivered.
- Design process:
- Supplier onboarding funnel data deep dive → The team used AI to build several concepts → I hand crafted an interactive prototype based on one concept we believe in → It remains a concept and is never shipped.
- Solution scope:
- The vendor-facing critical path from invite to first payment: landing, profile confirmation, payment-method, success state, and the passwordless return model.
- Design question:
- How can we show vendors the value of our product without requiring them to hand over sensitive business data and to commit to creating an account?
- Team:
- 1 product manager, 1 product designer, 1 researcher, Claude.
01Context & problem
When a business wants to pay a supplier electronically, it invites that supplier onto the network. The supplier arrives with one intent: get paid. Yet the legacy flow asked them to create a password-protected account, complete multi-factor authentication, and fill out a long business profile before they ever saw the payment waiting for them.
The audit made the core problem clear: the product was front-loading effort, credentials, sensitive data before user seeing the payment, which is exactly backwards for a user whose only goal is to be paid once.
Account creation came before any value. The flow opened with username, password, and MFA setup, so vendors were asked to commit to a platform.
"I don't want to set up ePayments. I wanna just get paid. I don't wanna set anything up, but I know that I have to do it in order to get paid."
The flow takes 10-14 steps to reach the first payment.
"When I meant cumbersome, there was a lot of stuff that I knew I didn't need. I don't understand why all this stuff is here, I'm just trying to get paid."
The invite email itself read as suspicious, and sensitive data requests like SSN arrived with no explanation.
"I recall feeling a little nervous about whether this was legit, is it safe to provide my banking information?"
"Being required to enter personal information like SSN just to create an account was a turn-off for me."
02Understanding the problem space
Before designing, I grounded the work in the body of research that already existed, then layered new evidence on top of it. The pattern was remarkably consistent across years of studies.
Suppliers come for payment, not for a platform.
About 80% of vendors signed up only because a customer asked them to.
Trust had to be earned at every step
Imposed choice, skepticism about phishing at play.
Fresh proof point that removing friction works
A parallel prefill onboarding pilot delivered a +7% funnel conversion lift.
03Growth goals
| Funnel measure | Legacy | Redesigned (target) |
|---|---|---|
| Overall funnel completion | 30+% | 50% |
| Password-step conversion | 70+% | 80% |
| Abandonment at password step | 20+% | Removed from critical path; password deferred to the end |
| Steps to first payment | 10–14 | 3–4 |
| Business-info step time | 2+ min | Under 1 min with pre-fill |
| 30-day transaction rate | 50+% | Maintain or improve |
| Return-visit rate | Not tracked | ≥30% of completers (new metric) |
04Concept prototype
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