Plastiq · Senior Director of Design · 2021–2023
One strategy, carried all the way to the screen.
Plastiq needed to grow from a rewards app into a financial-operations company before an IPO. I authored the strategy, built the organization, and led the product work. This page is the strategy and the product. The system, the site and the API are on the next.
- Role
- Senior Director of Design, reporting to the CPTO
- Team
- 10+ incl. two managers: product design, content design, design technology, marketing design
- Period
- 2021–2023
- Company
- B2B payments and SMB financial operations
Contents
Starting point · 2021
A payments app for points-chasers.
Plastiq invented paying bills by card where cards weren’t accepted, and had ten years of volume to show for it. But the story was consumer rewards, the product was built for one payment at a time, and the plan was to go public.
Already in flight
From the occasional payment to every payment on card.
Bulk and batch payments meant a big jump in information density, on a UI built for one-off use. Even paginating payment history took a refactor I had to push for.
What the plan had to answer
The story had to hold up for investors, not just users.
- A consumer-rewards story in front of investors
- One product, one use case, and rising competition on both sides of the payment
- Short-term financing and credit as untapped levers
- A UI not built for high-volume use
Pitched to the CPTO · 2021, refreshed for ’22–’23
Businesses grow by making their money run faster laps.
The plan to IPO. It reframed Plastiq from a payments convenience into a working-capital instrument, made the argument in numbers rather than adjectives, and turned one product into three.
Authored and presented by me. The full ’22–’23 deck is on the strategy page.
The reframe
Every business has the same amount of time.
What varies is how fast cash moves through it: the cash conversion cycle. I introduced the idea internally, and it’s why Plastiq became more than one product.
The math
A 3% card fee beats a 12% loan.
Once you count tax deductibility, rewards and a 60-day repayment, the card is the cheaper capital. "Rewards" is a feature; "7.5% vs 10.5%" is a CFO argument.
Bank loan
- Base rate
- 12.0%
- Tax deductibility
- −1.5%
- Rewards
- 0%
- Repayment
- 12 months
- Annualized cost of capital
- 10.5%
Card payment
- Transaction fee
- 3.0%
- Tax deductibility
- −0.75%
- Rewards
- −1.0%
- Repayment
- 60 days
- Annualized cost of capital
- 7.5%
Illustrative, from the strategy deck. Assumes a 25% tax rate.
The levers
Three ways to be faster.
Payment speed is the core competency and came first. The other two are what made Plastiq a platform.
Payment speed
Clear flows, consistent statuses, error handling.
Cash conversion speed
Extend payables, shorten receivables, credit that shortens the cycle.
Workflow speed
Bulk tools, one dashboard, approvals, vendor records.
One question, cheap to ask and expensive to ignore.
“Will this effort improve speed and performance? Will this feature accelerate our customers’ business?”
The Plastiq Principle, the filter I put in front of every prioritization conversation
The portfolio
One product, three ways to win.
Pay only needed a name once Accept and Connect stood beside it. One account across all three, built for the financial growth hacker: the owner who understands the cash conversion cycle and uses it to grow.
Pay
Extend days payable: pay any bill by card.
Accept
Reduce days sales outstanding: get paid faster.
Connect
Embed both inside other platforms.
The product · Plastiq Pay (in-product brand: iQ)
Pay, rebuilt for the operator paying hundreds of bills.
The days-payable lever, and the surface where the strategy had to become real. The redesign moved Pay from a form for one payment to a workspace for cash: statuses you can trust, bills in before payments out, and the vendor as a record rather than an address.
Pay team led by Danny Lopez · Direction, review and the product decisions below: me · Working mocks shown; iQ was Plastiq’s in-product brand.
The workspace
Cash first, then what’s leaving.
Home opens on available cash and available credit, with scheduled payments carved out of the total. The payments list splits drafts, approvals, scheduled and paid, with status as a badge on every card.
The decision
The date that matters is the charge-on date.
A list card has room for one date. The strategy said cash flow comes first, so the card shows when the money leaves, and delivery lives one tap deeper. One note; every list in the product followed.
Statuses
A payment you can track.
Scheduled, processing, sent, delivered, deposited: the same five states on every surface, with dates. Statuses that inspire confidence were the first activation blocker named in the strategy.
Workflow speed
Bills in before payments out.
Forward an invoice to an AP address and it arrives as a payable record. The one question the product asks is the one that matters: is this the vendor on the invoice, or the one on your account?
The vendor is a ledger, not a contact.
Last payment with its timeline, delivery method and check details, then everything awaiting approval, scheduled and paid. Approvals and roles are what let a bookkeeper and an owner share one account.
Before submit
Every number on one screen, and the error says what to do.
Amount, fee, total, the date the vendor receives it, the bank it goes to, the card it comes from and how it will read on the statement. When something is wrong, the banner names it and offers the fix.
The product · Across Pay and Connect
Regulation, designed in rather than around.
KYC, KYB, AML and state law. Each became a field, a sentence or a step, placed where the person needs it. The rules were the same across Pay and Connect; the surfaces shown are from the Connect widget.
Rules and direction: me, with compliance and ops · Surfaces shown: Connect widget, lead designer Omar Tavarez
State law, only when it applies.
Texas requires a taxpayer ID, so the step appears only for Texas billing addresses, with the statute’s reason in the interface.
Risk classification without ever saying "risk".
Pick a category, then "could you be more specific?" Progressive disclosure does the underwriting.
Fees explained before they’re disputed.
The fee is itemized, with the subsidy shown and the statement descriptor stated. A charge you can reconcile is one you don’t dispute.
Registration
Three ways in.
Know-your-business states its constraints up front, gives file limits before rejection, and promises a 24-hour review at the end. The third route is what makes embedded genuinely embedded.
Plastiq.com
Our own front door.
Partner-hosted link
Any biller a partner points at it can onboard.
Inline in the widget
Pay as a guest, with no Plastiq account.
Outcome
What it added up to.
The strategy shipped across product, brand and web. Plastiq’s valuation tripled in my two years there, most of it in 2022 as the plan was implemented.
What I took from it
Strategy is a question people can ask without you.
The Plastiq Principle worked because anyone could put it to any roadmap item in any meeting.
The product is where a strategy earns the right to be believed.
The cash-conversion argument convinced the CPTO. The charge-on date on a list card is what convinced the customer.
The strategy decided what to build. The product proved it. The system made it hold.
Next: the system, the site, and the API →