Payment UX in 2025: Balancing Security with Simplicity

Question 1: How are you balancing security requirements with frictionless payment experiences, and what specific UX innovations have yielded the best results in your organisation?

Ray Shinzawa, Managing Director, JCB International (Europe) Ltd.

Balancing strong customer authentication with frictionless user experiences in mobile banking and payment applications is a complex challenge. 

While the long-term vision of AI handling all financial processes is compelling, the reality for 2025 and beyond is more nuanced. AI will act as a powerful assistant, augmenting human capabilities and driving significant improvements in the payments landscape.

For payment providers, this will mean leveraging AI to deliver hyper-personalised financial experiences, including faster transaction processing, proactive fraud detection, and tailored customer service. 

This approach will enable payment providers to strengthen security through methods like AI-driven identity verification and multi-factor authentication, making payments quicker and more secure, which is crucial for staying competitive and meeting evolving consumer expectations for seamless and secure transactions. 

AI works around the clock to protect merchants and consumers from fraud. McKinsey research shows AI’s potential to significantly reduce fraud detection costs—by as much as 30%. 

New AI-powered tools can analyse large datasets to spot in seconds subtle signs of fraud that humans might miss. It constantly learns and adapts to new scams, staying one step ahead of the criminals.

However, it's important to address potential downsides. We need to ensure AI is used responsibly and doesn't create new biases or exclude anyone from accessing financial services. 

This is particularly crucial when considering the impact of AI-driven authentication methods on user experience and regulatory compliance. For AI to be truly trustworthy, it needs to be transparent in its decision-making and keep our data safe.

Arnon Borensztajn, Head of Enterprise Platform, PayU GPO

One key principle that guides our UX best practices is providing clear communication about data usage. By explaining why certain information is required and providing links to privacy policies, we reassure users that their data is being handled securely. 

Additionally, we have implemented editable consent choices, allowing users to manage their privacy preferences actively. This not only increases trust but also provides users with more control over their data. 

Our focus on mobile-first design ensures that the payment experience is consistent and secure across devices, which further reassures users of the security and reliability of the system. These changes have helped improve our conversion rates and overall user satisfaction, ensuring that users feel confident and protected when making payments.

Question 2: As embedded finance grows, how are you approaching the design challenges of integrating payment experiences into non-financial platforms while maintaining brand consistency and user trust?

JP Lips, CEO, DNA Payments

Firstly, it’s not only non-financial brands that are using embedded finance. Many financial services firms may not have the expertise or licensing to offer a particular service, so they’re relying on an embedded solution from another provider rather than building it themselves.

With embedded finance, there are design challenges that come with the offering. That is partly about brand consistency, but also clearly signposting when a user is engaging with an embedded service. If an end user has an issue with an embedded service, for example, are customer service staff able to handle it? Or is there a separate customer support for the embedded offering? 

On balance, it may be better to compromise on brand consistency if it’s clearer to the end user who they are dealing with. Ultimately, nothing is going to destroy user trust faster than if they don’t understand who is providing them with a financial service.

Arnon Borensztajn, Head of Enterprise Platform, PayU GPO

We use a standardised, adaptable design approach that ensures the payment experience feels cohesive with the rest of the platform. This involves uniform layouts, consistent typography, and colour schemes that align with the brand’s visual identity. 

This, in conjunction with providing clear explanations on data usage and privacy policies, creates an embedded finance ecosystem that feels intuitive, familiar and like a natural extension of the platform.

Question 3: What behavioural insights about your customers have most surprised you in the last year, and how have these findings changed your approach to payment experience design?

Arnon Borensztajn, Head of Enterprise Platform, PayU GPO

A surprising insight we identified was that a limited and neutral colour palette increased conversions. As such, we have updated our UX to utilise white, black, grey and soft tones) and now only use accent colours sparingly, on buttons or important elements. 

We found that this helps to highlight key elements and draw attention, so users know which elements are most important. 

We also eliminated additional visual effects (graphics, shadows, gradients), keeping visual elements to an absolute minimum to focus the user’s attention on the content and function of the interface.

Question 4: Looking beyond traditional metrics like conversion rates, what novel KPIs or measurement frameworks are you using to evaluate the true quality of your payment experiences?

JP Lips, CEO, DNA Payments

Payments are a means, not an end – a user has something else they’re trying to achieve, whether they’re making a purchase or paying a bill or signing up for a subscription. So the best payment process has to be fast, it has to be robust, and it has to be invisible and utterly forgettable for the consumer.

Measuring that doesn’t have to be complex: How many seconds is it taking a payment to complete? For an online payment – how many clicks are involved? What are the authorisation and success rates? 

Those KPIs give us a proxy for the overall quality of the payment experience. But the end goal is to make the payment invisible.

Arnon Borensztajn, Head of Enterprise Platform, PayU GPO

We take a data driven approach to continuously refine our strategies to optimise payment processing, reduce friction, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction. Going beyond traditional KPIs also means we get a clearer picture of the effectiveness of the payment flows designed.

Aaron Holmes, CEO of Kani Payments

What we're seeing is a significant efficiency gap that's holding back innovation in payments. When companies spend up to eight weeks a year on reporting tasks, that's time and resources diverted from growth and development. This isn't just a back-office problem—it directly impacts the front-end customer experience. Every hour spent manually reconciling data is an hour not spent improving user journeys.

The payments industry faces a hidden productivity crisis. Our research shows companies dedicate 142 hours per year—the equivalent of 18 working days—to mandatory card scheme reporting alone. This number rises to 184 hours annually for those managing multiple scheme requirements, which is a full working month that could be reinvested in customer-facing innovations.

Data accuracy isn't optional in payments—it's fundamental to customer trust. Our latest survey revealed that 64% of organisations frequently encounter data errors and anomalies in their reports. These same inconsistencies can manifest in customer-facing services, eroding confidence in what should be a seamless experience. The connection between back-office data integrity and front-end reliability is one that companies can’t afford to test.

The way payment companies manage financial data directly shapes front-end UX, from the reliability of account balances to the speed of approvals and the consistency of transaction records. Yet, a cultural resistance to modernisation persists: 40% of companies are either satisfied with existing processes or prefer the familiarity of spreadsheet-based workflows. But it’s important to remember that back-office issues don’t just stay in the back; they surface where customers feel them most.

For embedded finance to deliver on its promise of seamless experiences, it needs rock-solid operational foundations. The complexity multiplies when payment functionality is embedded across diverse platforms and services. Companies that modernise their back-office infrastructure are best positioned to support consistent, frictionless embedded payment experiences at scale.

Payment companies need to start viewing operational efficiency through the lens of customer experience. When 44% of companies still rely on spreadsheets for critical reporting tasks, it's not just an operational issue—it's a UX limitation that needs to be measured and addressed. Slow, error-prone processes directly impact the front-end experience, like transaction tracking, refunds and accurate balance updates.

Automated reconciliation and reporting isn't just about compliance—it's about creating the operational bandwidth to deliver exceptional payment experiences that drive customer loyalty and business growth.