Increasing mobile card usage through reimbursement redesign

Increasing mobile adoption and card usage through reimbursement redesign

Moss is a company expense management platform. Card usage directly drives revenue, but mobile adoption was low, with only ~2% of users actively using the app. This limited transaction volume and reduced the effectiveness of card-based spend.

Low mobile adoption and card usage were not caused by lack of features, but by behavioural and structural friction across different user groups:

Employees avoided using Moss cards

Managers had limited engagement with mobile controls

Finance teams prioritised compliance and operational simplicity

The key question was: How do we increase card usage and mobile adoption in a way that aligns with how users actually manage money?

Approach

I led structured research across:

external beta users

customer focus groups

internal stakeholders

Covering:

employees

team managers

accountants

This was complemented by behavioural analytics (Hotjar, product data), which showed:

frequent re-checking of reimbursement status

low interaction with IBAN reimbursement flows

drop-offs in card usage during time-sensitive payments

In Germany in particular:

Companies preferred reimbursing via payroll for compliance and cost reasons

Employees needed immediate reimbursement due to personal cash flow constraints

This created a structural mismatch:

Company process ≠ employee needs

Employees were not avoiding Moss due to UX alone, but because using it created financial risk for them.

We identified three potential directions:

Google Pay integration to reduce friction at payment

Mobile budget controls to drive manager-led adoption

Faster, more reliable reimbursement flows

Rather than committing upfront, we prioritised based on:

user impact

behavioural constraint

speed of validation

Reimbursement was identified as the primary blocker

We designed and launched an MVP reimbursement flow:

Employees could add bank details or card information

Once an expense was approved, funds were advanced instantly via an internal Moss wallet

Companies continued to reimburse via payroll later

This created a dual-layer system:

Immediate liquidity for employees

Compliance and cost control for companies

We used existing infrastructure to ship quickly and validate behaviour change before scaling.

Mobile adoption increased from ~2% to ~40%

Card usage and transaction volume increased significantly

Improved user trust and reduced reliance on personal cards

Established a scalable foundation for future payment features