Improving WeChat QR code Payment Feature

My role: Senior UX researcher at Tencent CDC, leading research on the merchant side of WeChat QR code payment.

Methods: Contextual inquiry and in-depth interviews with merchants and store staff.

Impact: Findings shaped an interaction redesign that reduced transaction time by 20%.

China is pretty much a cashless society by now. In China, almost all stores accept cashless payments like WeChat Pay. Here's how WeChat QR code payment works:

Merchants generate their own individual payment collection QR code. Customers open WeChat to scan the code, confirm the amount, and make the payment after passing the security checks. This product is designed for merchants without code scanners or other cash registers that can be used to collect money.

Below is the user payment flow from the customer's end:

Objectives

• The business objective is to encourage merchants to use WeChat as the main method to receive payment.

• The research objective is to improve the user flow on the merchant's end, increase efficiency, and make it easier to use.

Methodologies

In order to gain better insights on how users interact with the product and their needs, I employed contextual inquiry as the main methodology. The participant observation allows the researcher to assess actual behavior in real time, and in-depth interviews allow participants to tell their stories, uninterrupted, in a detailed and coherent manner in an environment that they are comfortable in.

• Before the study – Participants are briefed about the nature of the study.

• During the study – The researcher acts as an observer, develops a list of questions that are then posed to the participant at a later stage.

• Follow up - conduct an interview based on the user's experience, so the researcher can probe for more details.

Findings

One thing we noticed during the study was that users often made phone calls about payments they had received. We had already designed a notification feature to tell users when a new payment arrived, so we weren't sure who they were calling or why.

After interviewing users, we learned why:

• Each QR code is connected to one WeChat account, which is linked to one individual's bank accounts

• The business owner isn't always at the store, so staff are often left in charge

• When a customer scans the QR code and pays, the owner gets the notification instead of the staff

• So owners and staff call or message each other to confirm payment before the staff hands over the product

So this is what we thought was happening for each transaction:

And this is what is actually happening:

In response to this new finding, we designed a feature that allows our users to authenticate other users (staff) to receive the payment notification.