£40M+ payment system transformed: From phone based bottleneck to Stripe portal
When our existing payment system was being decommissioned, I led the design of a faster, clearer replacement. The goal was to help auction buyers complete time-critical payments within 24 hours, with reduced complexity and risk.
A payment experience built for high-stakes property transactions.
When our existing payment system was being decommissioned with under six months’ notice, I led the design and implementation of a faster, clearer replacement. The goal was to help auction buyers complete time-critical payments within 24 hours, with reduced complexity and risk.
Context
Buyers secure properties after auction through multiple payment routes, all supported by a payment system that was being decommissioned.
Problem
Without a replacement, buyers would lose a reliable payment route and internal teams would fall back on manual workarounds - putting millions in revenue at risk.
Goal
Replace the retiring system with a single, clear payment flow that supports buyers while reducing operational complexity.
A simple payment hid a complex operational process that caused frequent issues within the business.
During discovery, I worked with departments across the business and captured a variety of operational and compliance issues that consistently required manual correction.
From project kick-off, I led discovery to map 7 payment routes and 22 real-world scenarios, and then used those insights to design a universal payment interface that supports every path through a single, consistent flow. By stripping away unnecessary noise, the experience keeps buyers focused on what matters.
The product needed to fit our business, not the other way around.
Building directly on a provider's native experience would have been quicker, but it would have left us constrained by what that provider supported. Stripe's out-of-the-box experience couldn't accommodate some of the ways iamsold needed to take payment, particularly multiple payments against a single invoice.
We also didn't want to solve the immediate decommissioning problem only to create another dependency on our next provider. I worked with the team to design a reusable internal payment service that sits between our products and whichever payment provider we use.
This meant our products could connect to a consistent payment capability, while the provider remained interchangeable underneath. If a provider changes, we can replace the connection rather than redesigning the experiences that depend on it.
No more waiting to pay, buyers can now self-serve.
Previously, buyers could only complete payment by coordinating with a salesperson over the phone, often introducing delays at a critical moment.
Automated payment links now allow buyers to complete payment independently, giving them control over when and how they pay while reducing reliance on manual support.
Making the change stick.
Alongside the product work, I created internal communication materials, including user guides and 4 animated tutorial videos, to support rollout. These were handed off to the Learning & Development team and used to deliver education courses, ensuring teams understood how the new payment system worked, how to support buyers, and when to intervene.
Introducing a custom designed Stripe payment portal into the heart of finance operations.
The move to Stripe had significant implications for finance workflows. I worked closely with the finance team to map existing processes and ensure the new, PCI-compliant system supported payment processing and end-to-end invoicing.
Previously manual, time-intensive tasks were automated, freeing the team to focus on higher-value work. The custom payment portal allowed Buyers freedom to pay as much as they liked, across cards and included Donor payments - something Stripe's native portal restricted.
Conclusion
With £40M+ in annual transactions at risk, the new payment experience replaced a fragile, manual process with a stable, self-serve platform — protecting revenue while reducing manual intervention and payment issues across finance and customer service.
Supporting materials helped teams adopt the new process, making a significant business change smoother to roll out.
The result was more than a new payment portal: it created a flexible payment foundation designed to adapt as the business and its providers change.