Optimising Payments & Transitioning from In-App Currency to Real Money

Evolving the Products Brand & Design System at an Early-Stage Startup 

Background

Vamp is a SaaS marketplace connecting brands with content creators, managing everything from discovery and approvals through to payments. Since launch, the platform had relied on an in-app currency system that obscured real costs, frustrated enterprise brands, and created operational drag. The payment experience had been deprioritised for too long, and the compounding effects were becoming impossible to ignore.

Understanding the problem

The core issue wasn't just a UX problem — it was a business risk. Brands couldn't clearly understand what they were spending, engineers were losing time to manual workarounds, and the in-app currency was creating friction at the exact moment brands needed confidence to commit budget.

Goals

Create a clearer, more transparent payment experience for brands while increasing revenue for the business.

Role

Lead Designer

Timeline

3 Weeks

Team

1 Designer, 2 Engineers,

1 Product Owner

SaaS Platform

Design Optimisation

B2B Platform

Web Design

Research
Processes, Plan and Findings

Key findings:
  1. 23% of support tickets were caused by brands hitting budget limits with no self-serve path
  1. 15% of enterprise concerns centred on currency conversion — inconsistent, opaque, and a churn risk
  1. Engineers were losing 25% of a workday to manual budget adjustments

With a three-week timeline, I triangulated across multiple sources rather than relying on any single input.

Zendesk ticket analysis revealed 23% of all support tickets were budget-related. Brands hitting their campaign limit had no self-serve path — they had to submit a ticket and wait for an engineer to manually adjust their funds.

Session recordings and analytics showed where brands were dropping off and which steps generated the most hesitation — pointing clearly to a transparency problem during currency conversion.

User interviews surfaced a consistent theme: the in-app currency felt opaque and untrustworthy. Enterprise brands flagged conversion rates as inconsistent and confidence-eroding.

Stakeholder sessions with the CTO and CEO confirmed alignment — both saw the move to real-world currency as a scalability decision, not just a UX fix.

Research
Processes, Plan and Findings

Key findings:
  1. 23% of support tickets were caused by brands hitting budget limits with no self-serve path
  1. 15% of enterprise concerns centred on currency conversion — inconsistent, opaque, and a churn risk
  1. Engineers were losing 25% of a workday to manual budget adjustments

With a three-week timeline, I triangulated across multiple sources rather than relying on any single input.

Zendesk ticket analysis revealed 23% of all support tickets were budget-related. Brands hitting their campaign limit had no self-serve path — they had to submit a ticket and wait for an engineer to manually adjust their funds.

Session recordings and analytics showed where brands were dropping off and which steps generated the most hesitation — pointing clearly to a transparency problem during currency conversion.

User interviews surfaced a consistent theme: the in-app currency felt opaque and untrustworthy. Enterprise brands flagged conversion rates as inconsistent and confidence-eroding.

Stakeholder sessions with the CTO and CEO confirmed alignment — both saw the move to real-world currency as a scalability decision, not just a UX fix.

Research
Heuristic Review

Two structural problems stood out from auditing the full payment journey:

  1. Lack of transparency

Fees and creator costs were buried during currency conversion — leaving brands to guess at what they were actually paying.

  1. No edge case guidance

When brands hit errors or exceeded budgets, the system gave them nothing — no explanation, no path to resolution. For enterprise clients managing significant budgets, this was unacceptable.

Research
Heuristic Review

Two structural problems stood out from auditing the full payment journey:

  1. Lack of transparency

Fees and creator costs were buried during currency conversion — leaving brands to guess at what they were actually paying.

  1. No edge case guidance

When brands hit errors or exceeded budgets, the system gave them nothing — no explanation, no path to resolution. For enterprise clients managing significant budgets, this was unacceptable.

Solution
User Flow for Edge Cases & Designs

The biggest design challenge wasn't the standard payment UI — it was the edge cases. What happens when a brand exceeds their campaign budget mid-flight? Before this project, the answer was nothing useful.

I mapped every over-budget scenario and designed explicit resolution paths for each.

Tooltip explanation

When brands exceed their budget, a contextual tooltip explains what happened, the implications, and available options — turning a blocker into a conversion moment.

Increase budget anytime

Brands can now top up their campaign budget at any point without waiting for support — reducing ticket volume and creating a natural upsell mechanic.

Tooltip explanation

When brands exceed their budget, a contextual tooltip explains what happened, the implications, and available options — turning a blocker into a conversion moment.

Increase budget anytime

Brands can now top up their campaign budget at any point without waiting for support — reducing ticket volume and creating a natural upsell mechanic.

Final Thoughts

  1. Edge cases are the product

The real value wasn't in the happy path — it was designing confident recovery paths for when things go wrong. That had more impact on completion rates than anything else.

  1. Constraints sharpen decisions

Three weeks forced ruthless prioritisation. The Zendesk data made it easy to identify which friction points were causing the most damage.

  1. Triangulating research reduces risk

Tickets revealed the volume. Recordings showed where. Interviews explained why. Stakeholder sessions defined success. No single source told the full story — all four together gave me the confidence to design something that worked for users and the business.

Final Thoughts

  1. Edge cases are the product

The real value wasn't in the happy path — it was designing confident recovery paths for when things go wrong. That had more impact on completion rates than anything else.

  1. Constraints sharpen decisions

Three weeks forced ruthless prioritisation. The Zendesk data made it easy to identify which friction points were causing the most damage.

  1. Triangulating research reduces risk

Tickets revealed the volume. Recordings showed where. Interviews explained why. Stakeholder sessions defined success. No single source told the full story — all four together gave me the confidence to design something that worked for users and the business.

@2026 Command+Z is my best friend.