Case studies

Codvo's instant solution drives financial inclusion, increasing sales by 21%

About the client

Our client is a high-growth in-cart payment solution provider partnering with online retailers or merchants to extend credit to buyers. With the client's in-cart payment solution, online shoppers go through a transparent lease application process via its payment gateway and can make purchases using the credit extended.

The client is a game-changer in this space and empowers people with little or no access to credit to achieve financial inclusion. However, many retailers and online merchants were hesitant to integrate their payment gateway onto the platform, due to the long and complicated onboarding process of the client.

Overview

The client wants to-

-Empower consumers with its credit facility by having it available on as many retailers and merchant sites.

-Integrate complex data into its system to make informed business decisions and provide a great customer experience.

Business Challenge

Improve merchant adoption

The legacy process of onboarding merchants was long and tedious, and multiple parties were involved. This delay not only led to a dissatisfactory experience for merchants but affected the efficacy of other business functions (such as sales, operations, and merchant acquisitions). The client was seeking a trusted tech partner who could assist them in expediting the process of merchant onboarding.

Go Direct-to-Consumer

The client has been iterating over this, and they required a mechanism for the consumer to avail credit instantly. The best solution to this was the new-age Virtual Credit Cards. It is a one-time use credit card that has no physical existence. And because it has  no physical form, the card can be used for carrying out  online transactions only.

Our Approach and Solution

1. UX Research and Design

We needed to produce an intuitive, easy-to-use, and compelling user experience design to make the client stand out among competitors. The client's vision was to provide a swift, effortless, and safeguarded online shopping experience while extending credit to the shoppers. We opted for Lean UX approach to design the solution, and achieve a faster development cycle.

2. Agile Methodology

We understood the business problem and broke it down into specific issues with the legacy process. Our agile methodology ensured that the client does regular reviews, and our team has ample opportunities of review and feedback.

3. Faster Releases

With client inputs, we identified key areas of improvement, and we narrowed our focus onto each of them. We conducted user research, multiple design workshops, empathy sessions with the stakeholders at the client end to derive a User-centered Design with cloud-based microservices architecture at the back.

3. AI-Driven Solution

We opted to offer a sleek payment option than a complicated in-cart option requiring buyers to wait more than 24 hours for approval. The essential element that we kept in mind throughout the product development process is that it should be simple to install and operate, intelligent (AI-driven) and predictive to tackle various business scenario on the go.

Tech Stack

A team of 24 seasoned design professionals from our end built a holistic solution for the client.

Chrome Extension for Shoppers
Our team designed an interactive chrome extension for the client to allow shoppers to install it with just one click. The extension analyzes the customer's shopping cart, allows customers to easily verify themselves, and generates an electronic one-time usable Virtual Credit Card. The virtual credit card generated instantly uses the credit limit provided by the client to purchase leasable products. Chrome Extension for ShoppersThe reason why our team suggested virtual cards is that the industry sees the adoption and use of virtual cards to grow by 90 percent through the next few years, and usage will pass $1 trillion by the year 2022, which is double the usage in 2019. The client will also benefit from the increasing adoption of this new technology.

AI Model for Lease Eligibility
The other part of the problem was predicting the lease eligibility of products in the shopper's cart. To achieve this, we created an AI model that predicts if the products are leasable or not. We scrubbed the data from the retailers that the client wants to do business with and defined a labeling system for its products such as electronics, furniture, etc. Based on this, we trained our AI model with 90%+ accuracy. We leveraged Product Prototypes as a service and methodology to design the product, with target users being the actual audience. We did multiple iterations in design while prototyping the product, and tested our early prototypes with focused groups. Rapid prototyping helped us to arrive at more concrete design decisions.   We created flow diagrams to chart the path users take through the product. Also, to move forward with the design, we created various sets of detailed mockups of the user interface. This approach was beneficial in showing our stakeholders the design progress and getting their feedback on design decisions.

Tech stack used: Python, React, CSS, Jupyter Notebook.

24+

Team members involved

77%

faster onboarding as compared to legacy process

30%

growth in client’s merchant portfolio in last 6 months

21%

increase in monthly sales noted by some of the client's retailers

Highlights

Business Impact

The client now has an easy, secure, scalable, and user-friendly solution for shoppers to pay online and avail credit instantly on merchant websites. The browser extension developed by our team allows people to generate a virtual credit card to make purchases. They can pay against the credit availed in easy installments over time.

The retailers who adopted this solution experienced lesser cart abandonment, since this facility extends credits to buyers who do not have easy credit availability.

Some of the client's retailers experienced a 21% increase in monthly sales.

With more and more satisfied retailers and easy marketing, the client's retailer portfolio grew by 30% in the last six months, a big jump from a mere 12% in the previous semester.


The online and hassle-free onboarding of retailers on the client's in-cart payment platform enhanced retailer experience, leading to 77% of time savings.