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PayPal
Account Quality Notifications Framework

Proactively engaging users through contextual touchpoints to update invalid acount information, reducing downstream friction through a mobile-first experience.
Senior UX Designer
2024-2025
Consumer - Mobile App
FinTech
PP Banner Update ’25
PROBLEM

Inaccurate personal information leads to friction across the experience.

Invalid, out of date, and unconfirmed personal information such as Email, Phone Number, and Addresses lead to different types of friction downstream such as limitations, log-in friction, and core task friction.

>15M

Users with low account quality

~250M

Cost savings + potential revenue

How might we help PayPal customers use our products without interruptions, so they can benefit from all PayPal features?
SOLUTION

Build an end-to-end mobile app experience to help users proactively improve their account quality based on how they use PayPal.
METRICS

↑Customer information accuracy

↑Engagement

↓Customer service contact rate
ROLE

I led design, defined interaction patterns, messaging strategies, and escalation logic across the notification framework. I collaborated with product, engineering, and content design to ensure consistency and scalability across multiple use cases and touchpoints.
DISCOVERY

I began by collaborating with Product & Engineering to define and prioritize quality triggers by user impact.

Quality Related Triggers

Our current solutions were disjointed, unpersonalized, and detached with how customers used PayPal.

<8% of Profile visitors updated their information
ASZ
HOME 0-90 DAYS
AQT
PROFILE POST-90 DAYS

A competitive analysis helped me to identify a number of key insights:

  • Multi-channel notifications to keep users informed and engaged.

  • Different use cases require different patterns to support user goals.

  • Clear, tangible value to help drive engagement.
Coinbase
COINBASE
Venmo
VENMO
Popl
POPL
Snapchat
SNAPCHAT

Mapping out user journeys helped identify key touchpoints impacted by account-quality triggers.

These became strategic points to target and message users effectively.
PP User Flow
DESIGN

I designed an end-to-end messaging strategy to maximize user engagement to test.

Leveraging holistic internal and external messaging patterns ensures we target users strategically across touchpoints to drive proactive updates.
PP Email
EMAIL
PP Push
PUSH NOTIFICATION
PP Home
HOME BANNER
PP P2P
PRODUCT BANNER

In partnership with Research, we discovered three key findings:
Clock
Timing Matters

Users ignore info requests when they are focused on completing a task.
Warning
Deadline clarifies urgency

Without deadlines, the urgency of critical info requests can be unclear
MegaphoneSimple
Say it loud & clear

Users lack urgency with passive notifications.
RESEARCH FINDING 1
Timing Matters

Users ignore info requests when they are focused on completing a task.

Frame 153
PP P2P
BEFORE
(PRE-TASK BANNER)
Post-Task Notification
AFTER
(POST-TASK NOTIFICATION)
RESEARCH FINDING 2
Deadline clarifies urgency

Without deadlines, the urgency of critical info requests can be unclear.

Insight 2
Group 119s
BEFORE
(GENERIC)
success update
AFTER
(CLEAR & URGENT)
RESEARCH FINDING 3
Say it loud & clear

Users lack urgency with passive notifications.
insight 3
SMS
SMS
Critical Home
HOME BANNER
CRITICAL SHEET
PRE-TASK INTERRUPTION

Notification Framework Strategy

To prepare users for upcoming limitations, urgency is gradually increased across internal and external messages using clearer patterns and more direct content.
90 DAYS OUT
PP Email
30 DAYS OUT
Post-Task Notification
1 WEEK OUT
SMS
POST LIMITATION
CRITICAL SHEET

Scaling Across the Experience

With different success states across the experience how do we create a more scalable approach?
Toast 2
TOAST
Half sheet
HALF SHEET
FUll Page 2
FULL PAGE
SOLUTION

Scalable, Independent Approach

Half-sheets catch users post-task without disrupting flow, plus embedded actions mean fewer taps.

This enables a consistent, plug-and-play pattern that minimizes engineering lift and allows for faster, broader implementation.
Post-Task Notification
BEFORE
(EXPERIENCE-DEPENDENT)
Scalable
AFTER
(INDEPENDENT & SCALABLE)

Est. Impact

Improving account quality, reducing friction, and increasing engagement.

↑50%

in overall account quality for all users

↓24%

in CS calls related to account quality friction

↑24%

in overall engagement in PayPal products

~250M

in cost savings + potential revenue

Challenges and key lessons learned

Here's an overview of what challenged me the most and what I’d do differently next time.
Barricade 1
Challenges

One of the biggest challenges was managing constant shifts in priorities, all while coordinating across stakeholders and navigating a complex and changing approval process.
GraduationCap
Learnings

This taught me to align early, define clear checkpoints, and not hesitate to escalate when support or direction was missing.

© Ahmed Saber 2025