Nirali Shah

At eBay, I was part of the Seller Payments team, I worked to improve and expand the platform to meet customer's needs and demands in a fast-paced startup environment.

I worked with the team to introduce a risk control mechanism (Reserves) that protects eBay from incurring losses while permitting risky sellers to navigate the economic downturn to maintain cash flow as they work to resolve their credit issues.

Team

Team of 3 UX designers and 1 content designer, I was responsible for creating the Reserves account

Role

UX Designer

Deliverables

Responsible for creating an end-to-end experience for the Reserves account.

Timeline

3 months

PayPal used to hold reserves on 7% of Large sellers (GMV > $120k), so the risk exposure for eBay was low. Now, without PayPal the onus of managing this risk relied heavily on eBay.

Business solution

eBay will introduce an industry standard solution: Reserves. We will set aside a portion of risky sellers’ proceeds as reserves, which will ultimately protect eBay against losses from unexpected charges, refunds, and bankruptcy.

What will the Reserves policy look like?

Based on the seller’s risky behavior, eBay will start collecting a percentage of their net proceeds from each order. They will keep that money in a Reserves account for a certain amount of time period (known as the rolling window) and will be released back to the seller at the end of that rolling window. In case the buyer requests a refund, eBay will use those funds to pay the buyer.

If the seller’s behavior becomes less or more risky than before, eBay will make changes to adjust the percentage or rolling window accordingly, or terminate their reserves policy.

Business requirements

In order to make it clear that the reserved funds will be unavailable for use, the Legal team asked us to create reserves as a separate account.

Introduce reserves as a new account

• Demonstrate how the Reserves account will fit into the current payments model
• Show how the user will navigate between the two accounts.
• Address policy terms (policy start date, rolling window, and amount held in reserves)

Provide a new structure on each view to support reserves transactions

Create an end-to-end experience from the time the seller is placed on the Reserves policy

• Reserves captured
• Reserves released
• Partial or full Reserves release due to refunds
• Ending of Reserves policy
• Updating of Reserve policy terms

Meet Steven, a large B2C seller on eBay. He sells refurbished technology that he buys from brands and auctions. Since the pandemic, Steven has been struggling with keeping his staff and getting enough resources to take care of order-related tasks. The lack of personnel is causing the delay in shipping, low financial/inventory management, and poor communication with buyers.

As Steven’s seller credit has dropped these past couple of months, eBay has identified Steven as a risky seller and will start holding 20% of Steven’s net sales for the last <30> days as reserves starting Monday, Jan 1st.

To better understand this standard solution, we looked at how PayPal, Etsy, and Amazon pay introduced Reserves to their users.

What did we learn from our competitors?

The Reserves experience mostly boils down to 3 common touch points.

1st touchpoint - Email notification

• Crucial to provide comprehensive and clarifying explanation of Reserves policy and terms.
• Email could easily become overwhelming and information-overloaded.
• Reduce sellers’ negative sentiment by showing good information hierarchy.
• Address questions that sellers would have upfront.

2nd touchpoint - Summary view

• Quick glance on the amount being reserved and its connection with other buckets.
• Use infotip to further define what is withheld/reserved
• Progressively display detail, not overload with information

3rd touchpoint - Reserves view

• Sellers use it to look at how reserves make an impact on their available balance.
• Be clear and transparent on the money movement and reserves formula.
• Links to help pages or request re-evaluation pages are a must.

Introducing reserves as a separate account in the current payments tab

In the current design, when the seller clicks in the payments tab, they can only see their available funds. In order to incorporate the reserves account in the current payments model, I explored a few different options to distinguish the two accounts.

Option 1

In this option, the seller will land on the accounts page that will display two account cards: Total funds and Total Reserves cards. The seller will have to click on the individual card to find information related to that account.

Feedback

• Pros: It becomes clear that there are two separate account
• Cons: It adds more friction in navigating the two accounts. The seller would have to always come back to this screen to view details for the other account.

Option 2

In this option, the seller will directly land on the summary page that shows a summary of both accounts on the same page. It will display available funds information first, followed by the reserves funds. To view more details, sellers can navigate using the left navigation.

Feedback

• Pros: It’s better than option 1 as it will take fewer clicks to navigate between the accounts.
• Cons: Since there are two big numbers displayed, it could confuse the seller to distinguish between how much money is available versus how much is reserved. It is harder to distinguish that the information displayed is for two separate accounts.

Option 3

There are many navigational links that the seller has to click through to get to this page. The user might feel lost on how to exactly navigate between the two accounts.

Feedback

• Pros: This option shows clear distinction between the two accounts. They look and feel separate.
• Cons: There are many navigational links that a seller has to click through in order to get to the right information (Payments > left nav > account tabs) to view details about the page. The seller would have to click through multiple links in order to get through the transaction details between the two account.
  • The user may feel lost on how to navigate between the accounts.
  • Feels that accounts are still somewhat combined

Option 4

In this option, the seller will use a two-card view on the top navigation to navigate between the two accounts.

Feedback

• We reached a consensus as our stakeholders, PMs, and Engineers preferred this option over the others.
• This version made the hierarchy clear and easier to navigate, also the amount displayed in the smaller cards indicated separate accounts.

To create consistency in experience, I made the summary page follow the same layout as the total funds page.

• Big number on the top and recent transactions to the right
• Making user to find information easily
• Following information about the policy (Reserve percentage, rolling window and effective start date/time)
• Followed by release schedule for the reserves and reports

Creating an end-to-end experience for Reserves policy

I was tasked with designing the end-to-end design experience for the seller after they have been placed on the reserves policy. This included designing for different use cases such as when the reserve is placed to the time it is fully released. Also, account for any full or partial releases of the funds due to buyer refunds.

What happens when the seller is placed on the reserves policy?

After our Global Customer Experience team notices a seller that could be a potential risk, they will then notify them with an email. This will be our first touch point. The email will explain what is reserves policy, the terms (including start date, rolling window and reserve percentage), and why they are placed on this policy.

When the rolling window starts, they will be able to see a two-account view. When the user clicks on the Reserves card in the top navigation, they will land on the summary page.

The summary page will show high-level details about the account, including the amount held in reserves, explanation about the policy, and their terms (Reserve percentage for each order, rolling window, start date/time, release schedule for upcoming 7 days, and reports).

To view granular details such as amount being reserved for order, the user can click on the see all link under the recent transactions section.

What happens when the rolling window begins?

Let’s say Steven was placed on Reserves and his rolling window began on Jan 1st.

On Jan 1st, we will place 20% of his earnings from each order into reserves. On the total funds account, we will show that $100 as a debit. While in the total reserves, it will appear as a credit. This money will be released on Jan 31st (at the end of the rolling window).

Clubbing treatment - In order to make it easier to associate reserves with each order, we are introducing a new “clubbing” treatment, where we visually show it as one transaction on the ledger view.

One ever evolving VPD (View Payment Details) page - To view more granular details about the reserves, the seller can click on the view link in each reserve transaction. Introducing a new type of VPD, ever evolving VPD that will be used on both the Total Reserves and Total funds to limit any confusion around money movement and will be held as a source of truth.

The reserve amount will be displayed on the top, fund status, transaction breakdown (reserve calculation), history section (date reserve was placed and when it will be released) and related transactions.

What happens when the buyer requests a refund on an order?

On Jan 15th, the buyer requests a refund on the order placed on Jan 1st. We will release 20% of the amount back to the seller’s total funds so they can refund the buyer.

To indicate the reversal of the money movement, we will show the money debited from the total reserves and credited in the total funds account.

On the VPD, it will show $60 remaining in reserves and under the history section, there will be a memo indicating $40 has been released due to refund. The refund transaction will appear under the related transaction.

What happens when the rolling window ends?

On Jan 31st, when the rolling window ends for the Jan 1st order. We will release the remaining $60 back to the seller’s total funds account. It will show the money debited from the total reserves and credited in the total funds account.

On the VPD, it will show $60 released to the total funds. The funds status will be shown as released. Under the history section, it will show that $60 has been released to the total funds account

What happens when the reserve terms are ending or updating?

The seller will be notified via email, whether their policy is coming to end or if there are any changes to their terms.

The reserve account will remain open for a year for the seller to view after they have been removed from the reserves policy.

If there is an update to their policy terms, they can view the updated terms on the summary view of total reserves. They can also view past reserve terms on that page.

What are the next steps?

After several rounds of iterations and approval from Business, Risk, Policy and Legal teams, we will be launching this to ~10 large B2C sellers in Australia.

Once it is released, we will follow up with user testing and based on their feedback, we will iterate on the designs before we launch it to our sellers in the US.