Fee collection on Motorway Pay
New feature to Motorway’s industry-first payment platform allowing dealers to pay for fees at vehicle payment time
TLDR
I designed the Fee Collection feature for Motorway Pay, enabling seamless collection of dealer fees. By improving UI clarity and aligning with Finance and Transport teams, I reduced invoicing errors and operational inefficiencies. Post-launch, aged debt decreased by 82%, and dealers reported significant time savings on admin tasks.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
May - Sept 2023
Skills
Research, process mapping, prototyping
The problem
In May 2023, Motorway released Motorway Pay, an industry-first online payment platform that allows dealers to make instant payment to seller and finance companies in just one-click. However, the MVP only supported vehicle payments, leaving associated fees – Motorway fees (Brokerage fee) and Transport fees – to be handled manually. Through users interviews, internal alignment meetings, and data analysis, we noticed that this had some negative impacts:
Operational inefficiencies: Manual invoicing by Finance and Transport teams was extremely time consuming and prone to errors.
Dealer dissatisfaction: High volume of invoice inaccuracies, particularly those handling large volumes. Dealers had to contact us and request invoice amendments, which led to frustration and payment delays.
Financial impact: A significant financial backlog was accumulating due to delayed payments.
Goal: Allow Motorway Pay users to pay for associated fees at same time as the vehicle payment.
The discovery
Understanding the current state
I began by mapping the invoicing process of the Finance and Transport teams:
Finance team: Collaborate with the Finance Manager to understand the existing types of fees Motorway charged, and map the current process for invoicing dealers, which included using 2 different third-party programs.
Transport team: Collaborate with the Transport Operations Leader to uncover nuances in fee calculations across different providers and scenarios.
Defining terminology
During these meetings, I was able to gather their input on terminology, for example Collection vs. Delivery and Pricing vs. Billing, to ensure the copy used in product was clear for all users, regardless of their role in the dealership.
Mapping the proposed flow
I started mapping out a streamlined user flow to integrate fee collection into the Motorway Pay process. However, I also had to keep in mind the dealer that were not signed up to Motorway Pay and edge cases, such as payment errors. That means the Finance team's manual process of sending invoices at the end of the month would have to continue existing, but now added logic based on dealership ID and payment success.
Using FigJam to map the current and proposed flows related to fee collection
After mapping the proposed flow, I collaborated with other teams to confirm feasibility:
Iterated with feedback from Finance and Transport teams to ensure feasibility and alignment.
Presented in weekly Design Review meetings for technical vetting with developers.
Developers had to run a few spikes to check any constrains from the payment providers we used, but once the final flow was agreed on by all teams, I could then start working on the UI.
The solution
Challenges in current UI
Simply adding fees plus their VAT amount to the current UI posed challenges for information hierarchy:
Important information risked being lost amidst clutter.
CTAs fell below the fold, impacting usability.
Design improvements
Separated actions (left) from information (right) to maintain visibility of price breakdowns throughout the flow.
Prioritised desktop layouts (80% of users) while ensuring responsive design for mobile and tablet.
Changed background colour to increase accessibility and maintain consistency with broader site improvements.
Payments page – Before and after fee collection
Impact in other areas
Aside from the payment's flow, the Total to pay was presented in other areas of the product as well, so I had to work with other teams to align on new designs.
Purchase page: Collaborating with another designer to redesign the price column to show exact amounts, now including decimals. Fee amount is displayed only after vehicle hits a certain sale status, so we had to think about how this would look like for each of the statuses.
Agent Dashboard: Aside from renaming the section so it would include the vehicle payment as well as the fees payment, this project was a good opportunity to optimised this section's layout to give better clarity of the price breakdown for agents.
Payment section on Agents Dashboard - Before and after Fee collection
VAT receipt: To be compliant with HMRC requirements, we had to provide a VAT receipt including the Gross and Net VAT amount. This document had to be accessed by dealers and their finance team, so we made it available in the payment details modal visible inside the Wallet and also as added as an attachment in the payment confirmation email.
User testing
User feedback played a crucial role in refining the Fee Collection feature. However, we encountered two main challenges during this phase:
Reaching busy independent dealers
Small dealerships often rely on a single person to handle all operations, including finance. These users are constantly multitasking—managing the dealership or en route collecting vehicles—making it challenging to schedule a 30-minute desktop prototype review. To address this, we split the session into two parts: a phone-based Q&A session and a shorter, 10–15 minute screen review. This approach was more practical for their schedules and ensured we gathered the insights we needed.
Finding the right stakeholders in large dealerships
While our primary contacts were accessible, they often weren’t involved in financial processes. Feedback from these stakeholders was positive regarding the payment flow, but they lacked the context to evaluate if our documentation aligned with their internal processes. We had to connect with their finance experts and schedule another meeting to get feedback on documentation format and content.
After engaging with 4 dealerships, we incorporated their feedback and made two key amendments to the documentation format. This ensured alignment with dealer processes while maintaining the streamlined payment flow. The Fee Collection feature was successfully shipped in September 2023, with documentation updates tailored to dealer needs.
The impact
Increase in dealers signups for Motorway Pay due to new feature
Reduction in aged debt after
12 months
Reduction in Finance team's hours spent dealing with invoices