Final Designs
Redesigning a 14-step manual onboarding into a self-serve digital portal — eliminating 40% drop-off.
PayU's Partner Program enables developers, resellers, and enterprise platforms to refer merchants and earn incentives on transactions. The legacy dashboard was built exclusively for individual resellers — it lacked self-serve capabilities for enterprise partners, relied heavily on KAM support for every step, and had a 60+ pain-point journey causing massive drop-offs.
We set out to redesign the entire partner experience across three user types: Enterprise Platforms, Resellers, and Developers.
Enable enterprise platforms to self-onboard and set up payment gateway on their platform without KAM intervention.
Filter junk leads and make pricing, merchant status, settlement & incentive information transparent and actionable.
Reduce KAM dependency for onboarding funnel and retention. Partners should manage everything independently.
We conducted 14 in-depth user interviews via video calls across 5 distinct groups:
Runs a website & app solutions business. Refers clients needing PayU integration, helps with PG technical setup. Wants to quickly integrate on behalf of clients.
No dashboard support for PG integration. Relies on direct KAM for integration credentials.
Experienced reseller. Uses dashboard regularly to refer merchants, track incentives, and research PayU products. Wants visibility into multiple products beyond Payment Gateway.
Dashboard only shows PG. Can't discover or refer Invoicing, Subscriptions, Payouts solutions.
E-commerce platform integrating PayU PG. Merchants can find PayU natively on the platform. Representative checks dashboard for incentive tracking and quarterly claims.
No API to programmatically fetch settlement & incentive data. Manual quarterly process with KAM.
Landing page unclear. Junk leads from merchants who should sign up as customers, not partners. Smaller resellers not represented.
Confusion between merchant & partner login. No way to resend OTP. Physical signature required for agreement document.
Unclear what docs are needed. Can't upload in chunks. Verification takes 2+ weeks instead of promised 2 days.
No dashboard PG integration support. Partners blind to merchant progress. KAM-dependent for everything. High business cost.
Settlements not real-time. No breakdown by merchant. Incentives appear at different time. Can't filter by month/period.
Multiple confusing methods (single, bulk, link). No support for non-PG products. Partner profile status never checked.
Manual process with no auto-credit (unlike competitors). Requires invoice + VRF form. Quarterly cycle. Disputes take 3+ months.
No way to add team members with permission levels. Can't manage multi-user access for enterprise partners.
No community, no partner forum, no shared learning. Partners feel isolated. No way to discover new opportunities.
Dashboard doesn't help partners discover new leads. Only PayU benefits. Partners want to find merchants in their geography or vertical for cross-selling.
No way to engage with other partners. No forum, events, or shared knowledge. Partners feel isolated and lack peer learning opportunities.
Partners only know about Payment Gateway. Dashboard doesn't support referring Subscriptions, Invoices, Payouts. Can't map merchants to products.
Incentive payouts cannot be automated — finance & GST compliance require manual processing. Claiming process remains offline.
Cannot offer custom incentive plans on the dashboard. Finance team manually handles custom arrangements.
Incentives on custom plans cannot be auto-calculated. Finance does manual computation for non-standard deals.
Quarterly incentive claiming must remain a manual workflow. We can make it visible and trackable, but not automatic.
Partners complete entire onboarding without KAM involvement. Clear progress tracking. Predictable completion timelines.
Settlements & incentives visible in real-time. Breakdown by merchant. Filter by period. No surprises.
Integrated credentials management for developers. Request access, share with merchants. No external emails.
The IA was rebuilt around three partner archetypes — Developer, Reseller, and Platform — ensuring navigation reflects the distinct workflows of each user type rather than a one-size-fits-all menu.
Reduced from 11 scattered nav items to 5 primary sections — eliminating duplicate entry points that caused partner confusion.
Navigation follows partner tasks (refer, earn, integrate) rather than internal product structure — matching mental models from user research.
Advanced options (API credentials, bulk upload) are nested under primary nodes — keeping the core flow simple for new partners.
A single at-a-glance view of active referrals, new merchants this month, total incentives earned, and transaction volume. Nudge cards surface incomplete tasks so nothing falls through the cracks. The transaction graph shows performance trend over time — motivating continued referrals.
Partners can refer merchants individually via a clean modal form — collecting name, email, phone, business category, and product. Pricing is shown inline on the right so partners understand what they're selling. A bulk upload option handles high-volume referrals without repetitive form filling.
Agency partners often have teams. This screen lets an account owner invite sub-users, assign roles (Admin, Manager, Viewer), and revoke access — all without contacting PayU support. Role-based permissions ensure sensitive incentive data stays protected while enabling collaboration across large partner organisations.
A self-serve help centre reduces inbound support load by surfacing FAQs, onboarding guides, and integration documentation contextually. Partners can raise tickets, check ticket status, and access a dedicated relationship manager contact — all from one place, reducing frustration during critical onboarding moments.
A built-in video library that lets partners learn at their own pace — covering everything from merchant onboarding to integration setup and incentive tracking. Instead of waiting on support calls, partners can watch step-by-step video guides, search by topic, and get answers instantly without ever leaving the dashboard.
Reduction in onboarding drop-off rate
Faster partner onboarding (14 steps → 4 phases)
KAM time reduction via self-serve features
Increase in merchant referrals post-launch
Initial designs assumed single-session onboarding — wrong assumption. Many enterprise partners have multiple decision-makers who need to approve different sections (legal approves agreement, finance approves banking details, tech approves integration). We had to redesign the save-state and handoff flow in iteration 2.
Better stakeholder mapping upfront would have surfaced this earlier. Next time: map all decision-makers before wireframing flows.
Partner forum, knowledge base, resource library. Partners can ask questions, share best practices, find leads in their vertical.
Predictive settlements. ML-based anomaly detection. Partner performance scoring. Personalized product recommendations.
Full REST API for platform partners. Webhooks for real-time settlement & incentive events. SSO integration with partner systems.