Clarify:  Is this Product for US only or Global?

Interviewer:  Upto you.

Interviewee:  I’ll choose US and then we will eventually expand.

Let me explain the existing Google payment product as I haven’t used it much

Gpay – Allows me to store all my cards and I can use my phone to pay from one of the cards that I have already stored

Wallet – Keeps my card and does auto fill when I’m buying online

Interviewer:  That’s good enough for now

User group: Alright, let’s define very busy people

• Executives
• Entrepreneurs
• House wives (juggling priorities with kids and home)

Need : Now let’s list out needs for these user group

• Executives:
  • Doesn’t have time to remember which cards to use when
  • Doesn’t remember to pay on time (Auto setup is good but doesn’t want to set it up everytime the card changes)
  • When they go for shopping or do online shopping, they want it really quick
• Entrepreneurs
  • Paying on time is a pain point
  • Every penny matters – CCard offers and deals are hard to keep track of.  CC Dispute process is lengthy
  • Keeping track of customers and suppliers payment
• House wives:
  • Paying bills and paying CC on time is a pain point
  • Keeping track of returns is painful
  • Getting the best out of all cards (points and rewards)

List solution: I’ll focus on Entrepreneurs – Let me list out the solution for the above needs

Paying on time is a pain point

• Gpay does a good job of reminding but let’s take it one step further to link the saving/checking account so the credit payment can be done automatically

Pros: No more missed payments that affects credit history

Dev effort:  Very easy (couple sprints)
 Every penny matters:

• Ability for Gpay to automatically select the right card based on the merchant
• Dispute process is time consuming:  Integrate with Google Assistant that helps user to tell about the transaction and dispute details and GPay will take care of the rest

Pros:  Get the best out of all the cards,  Dispute isn’t a headache, Google Assistant can take care of everything

Dev effort:  Medium (Integrate with Google assistant and Sorting card’s best deals automatically)

Keeping track of payments – Google Assistant to do auto calling and get the accounts payable sorted out. – This is something most CRM does so I’ll not call it a major pain points.

Prioritize & Paint the picture/ Summary:  I’ll tackle every penny matters feature because it opens up busy entrepreneurs’ time to focus on their core business rather than keeping track of cards, it’s rewards and upside.  In addition to that, they don’t need to login to the bank’s website ever to even open up a dispute which is time consuming.  Google Assistant is part of the ecosystem so integrating voice request wouldn’t be a huge lift from development perspective.

Users are incentivised to use GPay as it does an unbiased card comparison to get the best to the user.  From Google’s perspective, this features takes Google Assistant to one level further to be a real virtual assistant .

Current App Clarification:
I’d like to clarify what the payments product currently does and then think about what we are looking to add in the future.
– Google Pay is an App that exists on the App store for Android/iOS  store that users can download. They can add their credit/debit cards to it and then pay using their phone, rather than the card.
– They can keep track of transactions made with those cards within the Google Pay app.

Goal clarification:
So the goal is to add a new product for busy people. Why is that? I will assume that it is because we are trying to increase the number of users by solving for a popular use case. This will benefit the Google Pay business by getting more transactions going through the system.

Users:
There are many types of busy users. Some examples include:
1. Parents with jobs.
2. Executives with high level jobs
3. Small business owners

Among these, it seems fairly clear that parents is the largest market size and will help meet the goals of increasing users and transactions. So, I will choose to focus on parents with jobs.

Pain Points:
There are multiple pain points for parents:
1. Hard to pay offline providers such as sports and other extracurricular classes.
2. Not always easy to pay schools and often requires lumpsum payments.
3. Transfer to other parents who may pay for activities.
4. Purchases online for offline books/toys add up to a lot and can be a stress on the budget.

Possible solutions:
1. Bring offline providers online by helping them setup business entities on Google Pay
2. Offer financing product for parents that will smooth out payments.
3. Enable transfers to phone numbers/emails.
4. Add ability to analyse payments and provide intelligent recommendations for cheap products in the future.

Prioritization:
SolutionUser ImpactBusiness ImpactImplementationCompetition

All of the options require a fair amount of effort, but I would choose to go with the option to enable offline providers to accept online payments. The reasons for it are:
1. It will be a key differentiation for Google Pay among all the other payment providers. All the other ooptions are being offerred by other providers in form or another so this will be completely new.
2. This will solve a big pain point for parents who have to deal with multiple payments options of providers. There is also no way to regularly track all these payments comprehensively.
3. If these providers are brought online, they can also be cross-sold Google Search, Gsuite and other products.

The solution would consist of:

1. Expand the Google Pay for Business app to enable these offline businesses to easily onboard and add their bank account details.
2. Add a way for these Business clients to send invoices to a list of clients.
3. Add a way for these clients to pay the Businesses.
4. Add a way for parents to categorise and keep track of these payments.

It would also require co-ordination with the Google Sales and Marketing team to reach out to these offline businesses directly and also  uses parents as a channel to get them to start using this product.

1. CLARIFY:
   1. May I assume the product should be related to payments? Yes.
   2. Is there a channel focus: watch, mobile, web? You choose.
   3. Is this a global v. US focused product? You choose.
2. BACKGROUND: Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and provide access to it to all individuals. Google Pay is the payments platform built by Google. It offers mobile / contactless payment on Android devices (phone and watch), though its app is also available on iOS devices. The app also offers abilities for users to explore local businesses (find food, gas), send money to individuals and see insights into their spend. On Safari, Chrome and Firefox it offers accelerated via prepopulated payment capabilities with a user’s card information.
3. USERS: When I think of very busy people, there are a few types of users I can think of when I segment them by type of job industry they work in. For this strategy, I’d like to focus on corporate workers who are working extreme hours in a corporate job (potentially 80+ / week), as I think they will have high spend (given their likely higher incomes) and could use an easier payments process.
   1. College / Graduate Students: Very focused on studies. Taking lots of classes. May be working a part time job to pay for school.
   2. Service Workers: Blue collar workers paid by hour. Includes waiters, delivery staff, night time guards, etc.
   3. Corporate Workers: Investment banks, corporate lawyers, etc. that are working extreme hours.
   4. Medical Staff: Doctors and nurses working in a hospital or ER. May be running on very long shifts / doing surgeries that take very long hours.
4. USER JOURNEY: Corporate workers may be purchasing a variety of different items food, clothes, every day toiletries, travel, etc. Given their schedules are extreme / hours are extreme, I would guess they have higher spend on apps, eCommerce sites and delivery. Let’s review the journey in the digital space:
   1. BROWSE:
      1. User decides to purchase an item.
      2. User pulls up website or mobile app to view items in store.
   2. PROCURE: User selects item.
   3. PAY:
      1. User inputs debit or credit information.
      2. User makes payment.
      3. At end of month, user receives credit card statement for monthly spend.
5. USER PAIN POINTS: Below are pain points centered around the user being very busy.
   1. BROWSE: 
      1. Schedule: User is extremely busy and doesn’t have enough time during the day to find time to purchase items as needed.
      2. Multiple Sites: User has to visit multiple sites to purchase items (ex. if looking for detergent, may have to go to Walmart, Target and Amazon).
      3. Discounts: User doesn’t know which site offers best discounts and doesn’t have time to review discounts for all sites.
   2. PROCURE:
      1. Too Many Options: User sees too many options / does not have time to make decision.
   3. PAY:
      1. Payment Details: User does not have time to input payment details multiple times.
      2. Pin: User does not remember pin and doesn’t want to spend time pulling card out of wallet.
      3.  Reconciliation: User doesn’t have time to reconcile monthly bill and check if transactions are accurate.
6. PRIORITIZE PAIN POINTS:

   1. Journey	Pain Point	Impact to User
      Browse	Schedule	High
      Browse	Multiple Sites	Medium
      Browse	Discounts	Low
      Procure	Too Many Options	High
      Pay	Payment Details	Medium
      Pay	Pin	Medium
      Pay	Reconciliation	High

7. SOLUTIONS:
   1. Scheduler: Google Pay integrates with Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal, etc. to tell user when its the optimal time to shop. Could also automatically block calendar in advance to make meal purchases. User inputs shopping needs and Google Pay automatically helps find best time to do shopping (either in person or digital).
   2. Shop Assistant: Google Pay scans all websites and tell user where is the best place to purchase item based on delivery time / cost, cost of item, etc. Automatically showcases option to user.
   3. Merchant Map:  Google Pay show cases merchants in the area near an office for items an office worker may need quickly – ex. good lunch spots, place to buy office suppliers, laundromat, office clothes etc. Could plug into Google Maps.
   4. Pre-Proposed Options for Purchase: User has ability to input different likes by industry. For example, user can input generally has XYZ food preferences, XYZ taste for clothes, etc. Google Pay showcases options they think the user will like.
   5. Automatic Re-Purchase: User has ability to turn on automatic re-purchase for certain items across multiple websites. For example, if site knows user always likes to purchase shampoo from Walmart and laundry detergent from Amazon, Google Pay could automatically re-purchase.
   6. Authentication: Allows users to use Face ID or fingerprint to approve payments.
   7. Reconciliation Tool: Google Pay builds out reconciliation tool that allows users to either upload receipt image or tag digital receipts. Google automatically scans receipts and detects if transaction differs from receipt (ex. tip).
8. PRIORITIZE SOLUTIONS:

   1. Solution	Impact to User	Cost to Google
      Scheduler	Medium	Low
      Shop Assistant	High	Low
      Merchant Map	Medium	Low
      Pre-Proposed Options for Purchase	High	High
      Automatic Re-Purchase	High	Medium
      Authentication	Low	Low
      Reconciliation Tool	Medium	High

       

9. SELECT SOLUTION: Based on the prioritization, I’d focus on building a site scanner for Google Pay in the app. Google Pay would automatically scan websites, which it should have access to given Google Search, and provide information as to where the best option for puchasing a given item is. For example, a user could tell Google Pay, “I am looking for office wear button down in navy blue” and Google Pay would review the sites on Google Search and showcase the best option for the user to purchase. The user could input specific details – i.e. I want the brand to be X, I want cost to under $200, I want delivery time to be under 5 days, etc. and Google Pay does all the work of finding the options. Google Pay would then allow for a quick 1 click payment of the item. If the user wants to do in person shopping, Google Pay could partner with Google Maps and provide the best option in terms of price and also distance from the user.
10. METRICS:
    1. # of users who use feature
    2. Average amount of spend / user
    3. Average time saved by user in month
    4.  # of repeat customers
11. LIMITATIONS:
    1. Google may not have ability to read websites / find options easily if website formats are different.
    2. Google initially may not be able to add a great detail of personalization in terms of what a user wants to purchase.