NAB

International payments discovery

Adding scope value through research

Background

Problem statement
By November 2025, NAB’s platforms must be ISO20022 compliant and use SWIFTREF data to meet new global standards when processing overseas payments. While meeting this objective, the payments CX is to be enhanced from legacy front end and back end systems.

Objectives and key results specific to enhancing the CX include:

Primary benefit

  • Ensure customers complete payment correctly first time

    (i.e. unfamiliar and complex payee details like IBAN, SWIFT/BIC codes are entered correctly)

Key metrics

  • 10% increase in outbound Straight Through Payment Processing (STP) rate

  • 5% complaints reduction for ‘unsuccessful payments’ and unexpected fees

  • 30% reduction in internet banking correspondent case files (i.e. less payment repairs by Ops)

An additional target state goal was to implement new architecture that allows front end UX to be driven by reusable ‘mini apps’, to handle data and functionality more efficiently.

Research

We wanted to better understand our customer types and how their individual experiences may play into contributing to key metrics.

Hypothesis
Our starting hypothesis was that new customers would struggle to understand banking jargon and using payee codes, and that existing customers would value speed and ease of use. We also believed that customers making business payments would be more sensitive to payment times, fees and rates.

Key areas of inquiry related to stakeholder questions and participants comprehension of the task(s) including:

  • Creating new payee with provided bank details and the supporting information

  • ‘Bank to convert’ UI (payments made over the weekend) and messaging

  • Out of hours payment processing timings

  • Service expectation upon payment failure

  • Any factor that may result in form abandonment

Additional challenges
Given the current state legacy UX had some obvious floors (i.e. accessibility, low guidance, unnecessary keying of data), we planned a first draft design to address these issues and retain a balance of just enough information and guidance without convoluting the UI and task flow.

A clickable prototype was put together in collaboration with architects to reflect a new mini app driven solution and stakeholders to ensure the business requirements were met.

Methodology
12 x 1 hour moderated research sessions online. Recruiting a mix of new and existing customers gave us a wider and more rounded customer perspective on the task. Amongst these user types, we also screened to identify participants that typically made business or personal payments.

For this phase of work budget allowed for 2 rounds of testing. Each round included 6 participants for 1 hour moderated sessions to usability test and interview:

  • Round 1 - Existing/repeat customers to complete a weekday payment, using an existing payee.

  • Round 2 - New customers to complete a weekend payment, adding a new payee.

Findings

Existing/repeat customers

  • Some weren’t familiar with the cut off times for payment processing past business hours as they didn’t typically make payments out of business hours.

  • Exchange rate sensitive - only reason to abandon form.

New customers

  • ‘Bank to convert’ (weekend payments) scenario created uncertainty in payment cost and timing.

  • Payment processing content wasn’t clear enough.

  • Button group UI component was misunderstood (optional bank data choices all thought to be mandatory).

All

  • Visibility of NAB fees was consistently recognised and recalled.

  • A repetition of information contained within the screen flow was noted.

  • Tooltips often missed, but when read showed high comprehension.

Outcome and next steps

Adding CX value to the design
A stand out finding was the ‘bank to convert’ scenario, where messaging is required to explain that the payment will be processed upon exchange rates being available on the next available business day. Customers struggled to comprehend this process and guidance. Some competitors bridge this service gap by securing a rate regardless of any change in the market rates on next business day.

Addressing this gap wasn’t considered in the original requirements but when sharing the customer sentiment back with stakeholders it was agreed that this was significantly detrimental to the CX enough to be added to the project scope.

Recommendations were collated and shared with stakeholders and further refinement and crafting of supporting information and guidance was required. Any further draft will require testing.

Next steps

  • Stakeholder workshops to engage FX Markets Team to work through how we provision a rate over weekends and non business hours.

  • Refine draft design that considers ‘How might we… ‘

    • 1. educate new users,

    • 2. reduce repetitive information displayed,

    • 3. include a weekend FX rate NAB can guarantee (‘bank to convert’ scenario),

  • Further research to validate user type personas, and

  • Further usability testing.