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— June, 2024

Improving the API integration and onboarding journey for new users

Overview

Mollie is one of Europe’s leading Payment Service Providers (PSP), offering businesses a range of payment solutions, including online payment systems for websites, in-person payment terminals, and financial tools. This project focused on improving the user experience for new customers, especially in the onboarding process.

I led the redesign of Mollie's KYC (Know Your Customer) experience and the API integration feature, simplifying the connection of websites and e-commerce platforms with Mollie’s services.

The redesign was launched across all markets and resulted in improved click-through (+366%) and conversion rates (+5.4%).

My role

Product Designer — Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Flows, Rapid Prototyping

Team

1 PM, 1 EM, 1 PD (me), 6+ engineers

Timeline

6 weeks

Tags

Fintech

B2B

PSP

Web

Onboarding

💫 Highlights

A quick preview — I will tell you how and why we got there.

🔎 Opportunity

Let's look at the numbers

Data revealed that customers who used a test API key were 3x more likely to complete a payment (65% vs. 23%) compared to those using their live key directly.

This presented an opportunity to enhance the user experience by allowing customers to test the feature before going live, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversion.

⚠️ Exact numbers are blurred out due to a NDA.

65%

With test payment

65%

With test payment

23%

Without test payment

23%

Without test payment

👤 Customer research

Diving deeper in the mind of our customers

We conducted user interviews that revealed two major pain points:

1

Customers had difficulty getting started with Mollie.

2

Users struggled to find the guides for integrating their API keys.

These insights led to a redesign of the user flow, aiming to make the API integration process more intuitive and seamless during onboarding.

🎯 Hypothesis and goals

Measuring impact

We formulated four hypotheses to test the impact of these changes:

1

Increase in test transactions made by new customers.

2

Increase in first live transactions made by new customers.

3

No decrease in customers completing full KYC steps after integrating the test API.

4

Improved click-through rate of product cards.

🚀 Execution

Taking action

To execute the improvements, we focused on three critical areas:

Documentation

We updated the documentation page to include clear, step-by-step guides for integrating API keys, ensuring merchants had direct links to relevant resources (e.g., WooCommerce integrations).

Prebuilt integrations: A new overview.

Code libraries: A new overview.

API keys journey

We explored different pathways for API key integration, emphasizing simplicity. Clear callouts and easy navigation were implemented to guide users through the process efficiently.

API keys journey

We explored different pathways for API key integration, emphasizing simplicity. Clear callouts and easy navigation were implemented to guide users through the process efficiently.

Usability audit of the old API keys page.

Getting started page

We overhauled the landing page by decoupling the KYC process from API integration. This allowed merchants to explore Mollie’s services and test payment methods before completing KYC, making it easier for them to discover and navigate key features.

Getting started page

We overhauled the landing page by decoupling the KYC process from API integration. This allowed merchants to explore Mollie’s services and test payment methods before completing KYC, making it easier for them to discover and navigate key features.

📊 Validating

A/B testing

An A/B test was conducted to compare the new experience with the previous one. This allowed us to gauge the effectiveness of the redesigned onboarding flow and API integration.

Get started

Test A: Previous get started page

Test B: Get started page redesigns

API keys

Test A: Previous API keys page

Test B: API keys page redesigns

🏁 Outcome

Our findings

The results of the experiment were promising, we saw:

⚠️ Exact numbers are blurred out due to a NDA.

Conversion metrics

Source: Mixpanel data

64.4%

+3.9%

First payments

64.4%

+3.9%

First payments

18K+

+6.2%

Full KYC provided

18K+

+6.2%

Full KYC provided

2.5K

+6%

Activated customers

2.5K

+6%

Activated customers

Click-through rates

Source: Mixpanel data

64.4%

+341%

Online payments - clicks

64.4%

+341%

Online payments - clicks

2.5K

+391%

In person payments - clicks

2.5K

+391%

In person payments - clicks

💭 Retrospective

What were the key learnings

From this project, several important takeaways emerged:

1

Importance of testing: Allowing merchants to integrate and test API keys before completing KYC played a significant role in increasing the completion rate of KYC steps.

2

Decoupling onboarding: Decoupling the KYC process from initial integration allowed users to explore and understand Mollie’s features before encountering friction, making the onboarding flow smoother.

3

Collaboration matters: Working closely with technical and external partners such as WooCommerce ensured that the project’s broader implications were considered early on, helping avoid delays and facilitating a successful rollout.

💬 Kind words

What my colleagues said about me

  • Job Tasche

    Product Manager • Mollie

    "Yves joined Mollie last year and made an immediate impact by redesigning the onboarding experience. He takes ownership, collaborates effectively, and validates assumptions with customers, ensuring we maximize our impact. His contributions have been invaluable to our team's success."

  • Caio Manzotti

    Principle Product Designer • Mollie

    "Yves is a natural system thinker and can easily find opportunities to improve the consistency, interactivity, and accessibility of designs across the web and apps. He was instrumental in our expansion and decentralization, creating the path for others to know how and when to contribute to our design system. All while still leading the design initiatives for one of our core product teams."

  • Matthew Lewis

    VP operations • Mollie

    "Yves is managing to work on the designs, an overall helicopter view from the vision, while being very deep now on the bets with the different teams. This is a key element on building out what our vision and future onboarding looks and feels like."

StudioPengu

Copyright @ 2025 Studio Pengu

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StudioPengu

Copyright @ 2025 Studio Pengu

All rights reserved.