One Onboarding
Xero's first provider-agnostic onboarding, live in AU and now the reference for the UK and US. I brought product, engineering, compliance and legal to one identity layer for every Xero payment service; when the AU partner switched mid-build, only the adapter layer changed.
MY ROLE
Lead product designer, platform and strategy
REGION
AU · UK · US
SHIPPED
Nov 2025 · AU first
THE PROBLEM
We have a leaky funnel
Every payment provider in Xero's portfolio owned its own onboarding. Customers re-entered the same KYB/KYC information for each one, were handed to unfamiliar branded flows, and returned to a different-looking product. Trust broke before a payment was ever made. My brief was to design the strategy that unified all of it into one identity layer.
96%
NEVER FINISHED SETUP
63 fields, 36 screens. None of that data reused in Xero.
0.2%
ACTIVE ATTACH RATE
Of new US orgs ended up with active bill pay.
50%
NEVER PAID
Of onboarded UK bill pay orgs never made a payment.
WHAT I DID
Defined One Onboarding as a reusable identity layer. Verify once with Xero, activate any payment service without re-entering data.
Led a three-week cross-functional discovery workshop with product, engineering, compliance, and legal, aligning the team on principles and architecture before a single wireframe existed.
Led qualitative research across AU, UK, and US, confirming Xero's brand as the trust asset and that customers expected verify-once as a baseline, not a feature.
Provided design direction to the Senior Designer through AU Bill Pay execution, ensuring the experience we're shipping stayed coherent with platform principles.
DEFINING THE DESIGN PRINCIPLES
In June 2025, I brought together leadership across product, engineering, compliance, and legal, with the Group Product Manager, Head of Engineering, Design Director, and Group Design Manager as approvers, to align on three design principles before any execution began.
Design principles
Xero-native experience
over provider visibility
The customer's relationship is entirely with Xero. Provider visibility is minimised where needed and eliminated long-term.
Minimize friction
over mandatory completeness
Always prioritize a minimal effort start. Optional path to complete profile and activate future services.
Quality and scale
over a rushed launch
Get it right to avoid future complications. A scalable solution over a fast, flawed one.
DESIGN DIRECTION IN PRACTICE
Move document upload to the last step. Don't block the flow mid-journey.
The problem
The original flow asked users to upload identity documents during the KYC step. For businesses with multiple owners, this was an immediate blocker. They might not have documents at hand, especially their business partner's IDs.
The direction I gave
Defer document upload to the final step. Complete identity fields first, handle documents last. For multi-owner businesses, this unlocked the invite path: a secure link is sent to each director to upload in their own time, unlocking everything else.
The before and after screens are in the gated section at the end of this page.
OUTCOMES
Launched Xero's first provider-agnostic, API-first onboarding in AU, serving as the reference pattern for all future regions and providers.
Architecture proven under real pressure. When the AU partner switched mid-build, only the adapter layer changed. The UX was fully preserved. The API-first call made at the workshop protected the product from a rebuild.
'Verify once, use everywhere' is already working. AU Payroll skips re-verification for customers onboarded for Bills, before GA. The platform promise is real, not aspirational.
AU is now the reference implementation for UK and US.
Under NDA
Screens, partners and targets
The rest of this case study shows unreleased Xero screens, the payment partners involved and the targets we set. It's shared on request: enter the password, or email me and I'll send it.
Looking back
Three weeks of discovery before a wireframe felt slow to some stakeholders. The partner switch mid-build is why it was cheap. I'd protect that time again, and set it up front as insurance on the build rather than a design phase.
The hardest alignment wasn't the flow, it was one identity data model that compliance, legal and every provider would accept. I'd open that conversation in week one.