Loqbox
A smarter payout: How research shaped Loqbox’s 2026 roadmap
Overview
In early 2024, Loqbox faced a major payouts issue, some customers were paid twice, revealing weaknesses in the payout process.
The business needed to understand what went wrong and how to make payouts safer and more efficient.
Scope
Research and design
Team
Product designer & Product manager
Duration
6 weeks
Outcomes
- Confirmation of Payee recommendation informed 2026 roadmap.
- Confirmation of payee expected to cut payout handling time by 6 hours.
- Improve the payout experience for 1,300 customers annually.
Objective
Understand and identify opportunities to improve the end-to-end payouts process making it safer and more efficient.
What even is a payouts process anyway?
As I was new to the payouts world, I began by embedding myself with the Finance team. My goal was understand what payouts are, how they work, and where things go wrong.
Key questions to answer:
- What does the payouts process look like end-to-end?
- Who’s involved, and what tools do they use?
- Where are the pain points and risks?
Interviews with the finance team
Mapping the payout process
Through interviews and observation, I discovered payouts weren’t owned by a single team they spanned multiple functions:
- Customers request their savings.
- Finance handles and approves payouts.
- Customer Support manages issues and communication.
To make sense of the complexity, I mapped all three journeys in detail, from the customer redemption flow to the internal processing and escalation steps.
Process insights from my conversations with the finance team
Process maps of all actors involved
What I found from discovery
The process was extremely manual dependent on spreadsheets, emails, and manual database updates.While safeguards had been added to prevent future double payments, the everyday inefficiencies were significant.
Pain Points:
- No automation or validation
- Customer bank details were manually updated, causing frequent errors.
- No real-time validation led to recurring payout failures.
- Customer Support relied on Finance to process or correct any payout errors.
- Data entry errors in the spreadsheets created confusion and delays.
List of problems identified from interview with finance team
Prioritising what to fix
I shared these findings with stakeholders and facilitated a prioritisation session to weigh effort vs. value.The group aligned around a clear opportunity:
“Introduce validation to prevent payout failures and reduce manual workload.”
We settled on this opportunity because:
- Validating bank details would almost completely remove the instances of payout issues.
- Save time for the finance team and customer support handling payout issues due to incorrect bank details.
- Improve the save payout experience for customers.
- We could also implement an off the shelf solution from our payment provider at no extra cost. Win, win.
Implementing Confirmation of Payee
We proposed implementing Confirmation of Payee a bank level check that verifies if the Loqbox account name matches the bank account details entered. If they match the customer can request their payment. If the detail did not match the customer could action the issue highlighted or contact customer support.
Confirmation of payee at the point customer request their savings payout
Outcomes and impact
This recommendation was adopted into the 2026 product roadmap and became a key part of Loqbox’s finance process improvement initiative.This
Expected Impact
- Reduce payout related issues by 40%.
- Saved finance and customer support 6 hours per week.
- Prevent common payout failures for 1,300+ customers per year.
- Improve process efficiency for the finance and customer support team.
Key learnings and reflections
Even without implementation yet, the research provided clarity and direction influencing future sprints and establishing stronger collaboration between Finance, Product, and Support.
If I were to do this project again, I would:
- Involve senior stakeholders earlier by running live interview watch parties, so they could directly experience the pain points. I had some push back from the CTO in regards to my approach and I believe this would have helped.
- Extend the research to include customer research for a more holistic view.
