Brady Valentino
Transforming a Niche Utility Into a High-Usage Feature That Grew Revenue by 3%
Background
Cash flow is one of the most critical needs for small business owners and independent workers. While WooPayments allowed next-business-day transfers by default, many merchants needed access to their earnings immediately — especially in high-volume moments. The team had previously introduced Instant Deposits as a manual feature, but adoption lagged due to low visibility and user friction.
Objective
Design and launch a payout experience that gives merchants more control and clarity over their funds—with Instant Deposits as the centerpiece.
My Role
As product designer, I led user research and product definition across three areas:
- Payout speed: Merchants wanted on-demand access to funds—even if it meant paying a fee.
- Eligibility confusion: Many didn’t understand why Instant Deposits wasn’t available to them.
- Unclear schedules: Payout timelines didn’t reflect bank holidays, reserve periods, or negative balances.
Approach
I partnered closely with engineering, compliance, and risk teams to uncover constraints around settlement windows, KYC, and fraud triggers.
My work included:
- Mapping out the end-to-end payout flow to identify where delays occurred.
- Designing a seamless opt-in flow that communicated fees transparently.
- Prototyping multiple withdrawal states, balancing urgency with trust.
- Conducting usability testing with 12 active users to refine edge cases.
- Integrating dynamic risk scoring logic visually into the UI, helping users understand when and why instant deposits might be unavailable.
Solution
We delivered a fully redesigned payout experience across three iterations.
- Manual Deposits MVP (WooPayments 5.0)
- Introduced opt-in control for merchants to manually trigger deposits.
- Clearer UI for disabling automatic deposits and initiating transfers.
- Simplified modal interactions and inline error states for clarity.
- Instant Deposits v1 (WooPayments 5.6)
- Enabled merchants to request real-time deposits to eligible bank accounts.
- Displayed instant deposit availability directly in the balances card.
- Introduced in-context tooltips explaining payout delays and thresholds.
- Scaling Instant Deposits (WooPayments 6.9)
- Replaced transactional breakdowns with payout-level receipts for performance and transparency.
- Streamlined the overview UI to focus on what merchants care about: amount, method, and timing.
- Added eligibility onboarding states and celebratory feedback on success.
Results
In the first 3 months post-launch
- $4.8M+ processed via Instant Deposits
- 30% adoption rate among eligible merchants
- 2–3 days saved per payout for merchants opting in
Impact
This work transformed payouts from a passive wait-and-see process to a transparent, user-controlled experience. It significantly grew division revenue by 3%, significantly improved merchant satisfaction, and laid the groundwork for more advanced financial tooling.
Brady Valentino
Transforming a Niche Utility Into a High-Usage Feature That Grew Revenue by 3%
Background
Cash flow is one of the most critical needs for small business owners and independent workers. While WooPayments allowed next-business-day transfers by default, many merchants needed access to their earnings immediately — especially in high-volume moments. The team had previously introduced Instant Deposits as a manual feature, but adoption lagged due to low visibility and user friction.
Objective
Design and launch a payout experience that gives merchants more control and clarity over their funds—with Instant Deposits as the centerpiece.
My Role
As product designer, I led user research and product definition across three areas:
- Payout speed: Merchants wanted on-demand access to funds—even if it meant paying a fee.
- Eligibility confusion: Many didn’t understand why Instant Deposits wasn’t available to them.
- Unclear schedules: Payout timelines didn’t reflect bank holidays, reserve periods, or negative balances.
Approach
I partnered closely with engineering, compliance, and risk teams to uncover constraints around settlement windows, KYC, and fraud triggers.
My work included:
- Mapping out the end-to-end payout flow to identify where delays occurred.
- Designing a seamless opt-in flow that communicated fees transparently.
- Prototyping multiple withdrawal states, balancing urgency with trust.
- Conducting usability testing with 12 active users to refine edge cases.
- Integrating dynamic risk scoring logic visually into the UI, helping users understand when and why instant deposits might be unavailable.
Solution
We delivered a fully redesigned payout experience across three iterations.
- Manual Deposits MVP (WooPayments 5.0)
- Introduced opt-in control for merchants to manually trigger deposits.
- Clearer UI for disabling automatic deposits and initiating transfers.
- Simplified modal interactions and inline error states for clarity.
- Instant Deposits v1 (WooPayments 5.6)
- Enabled merchants to request real-time deposits to eligible bank accounts.
- Displayed instant deposit availability directly in the balances card.
- Introduced in-context tooltips explaining payout delays and thresholds.
- Scaling Instant Deposits (WooPayments 6.9)
- Replaced transactional breakdowns with payout-level receipts for performance and transparency.
- Streamlined the overview UI to focus on what merchants care about: amount, method, and timing.
- Added eligibility onboarding states and celebratory feedback on success.
Results
In the first 3 months post-launch
- $4.8M+ processed via Instant Deposits
- 30% adoption rate among eligible merchants
- 2–3 days saved per payout for merchants opting in
Impact
This work transformed payouts from a passive wait-and-see process to a transparent, user-controlled experience. It significantly grew division revenue by 3%, significantly improved merchant satisfaction, and laid the groundwork for more advanced financial tooling.