During my time at Wave, I worked on a project centred around Instant Payouts. Instant Payouts changes the way small businesses manage their cash flow day-to-day. Rather than waiting the typical payment processing times—up to five business days—Instant Payouts allows business owners to use the money they’ve earned immediately to grow their business or pay expenses.

Wave’s mission is to make it easier for small business owners to confidently manage their finances by providing a streamlined suite of accounting products and payment processing solutions. So, when Wave’s users wanted to receive their earnings more quickly to help ensure positive cash flow and put money back into their businesses, we needed to find a solution. As a payments project team, we worked with our solution provider to launch Visa Direct’s real-time push-to-card capability as part of "Instant Payouts" in December of 2018, becoming one of the first in small business accounting to offer push-to-card payments.

Our payment processing has always helped small business owners access their funds, but for businesses that operate 24/7/365 - they needed to receive funds faster in order to ease their cash flow worries. These entrepreneurs wanted access to funds over weekends and bank holidays so they could run their businesses more efficiently. The solution also needed to work for a diverse user base, with some small businesses receiving several payouts per day and others using the service only a few times per year.

As a small business owner using Wave, the current delay of 2-5 business days in access to funds is hindering my ability to initiate projects quickly for my clients. The process for accessing funds needs to be improved to allow me to purchase the supplies and merchandise that I may need.

In December 2018, we enabled Visa Direct’s real-time* payments and launched "Instant Payouts” to help small business owners protect themselves from cash flow limitations and give them faster access to funds for payroll and other expenses. After running some sessions around customer value and pricing models, we decided to charge a 1% fee for "Instant Payouts,” a cost that, we discovered, many entrepreneurs were willing to pay for the assurance that funds will be available when they needed them. Our users mentioned feeling more confident that they won’t have to tap into their personal accounts for business purposes. A second-iteration of the product introduced scheduled “Instant Payouts", giving small business owners the ability to schedule payouts if they don’t have time to log into the app.

I started by involving the entire project team in the ideation sessions for Instant Payouts. We ran several "Crazy 8's" sessions to flesh out several key flows for the full in-app experience. Using the ideas from these sessions, 2-3 concepts were created and tested with users (comparative testing), before starting to refine an approach.

Once the final concept was created based on the previous tests, I ran through the entire flow from end-to-end with members of the Wave user-base to ensure that it was both intuitive and easy for the end-user. The designs were then further refined and usability tested before being handed over to my engineering team, ready to be built.

As an early adopter of real-time payments, Wave managed to relieve concerns about cash flow and was able to enable small business owners to be more efficient. “Instant Payouts” has helped Wave retain current customers and acquire new ones, continuing the trend of fast growth for the company. Following the implementation of “Instant Payouts,” we heard from users that they were more satisfied and willing to stay with Wave longer. They use the funds to cover expenses, like new equipment or inventory, that enable them to run or expand their businesses. Small business owners loved the flexibility “Instant Payouts” provides — they can use it for every payout or only when they need fast funds. Plus, with real-time payments being processed through the Visa network, they can feel assured that the payouts are secure.