A beautifully designed invoice lending product to help small businesses thrive
Harnessing the power of invoices to relieve financial strain, boost cash flow, and help small businesses grow.
How can we connect small businesses and lenders quickly to reduce financial pressure?
New Zealand is a nation of small and micro businesses – around 546,000 of them. Outstanding invoices are a significant financial burden for these businesses. Waiting for payments makes it hard to keep momentum, look after a team, and achieve business goals. It can take time to wait for a small business loan, and quick-turnaround loans often come with risk or hidden cost.
Invoice Hub came to us with an idea for a solution - a safe, secure invoice lending marketplace to connect small businesses needing capital with lenders looking for secure and reliable lending opportunities. We care about this mission - so much so we’re now shareholders in the company.
Together, we created
- A secure, safe, beautifully designed invoice lending platform to quickly connect small businesses and lenders.
- An understanding of a complex subject matter and applying good product design to a brand new service for Aotearoa, making it easy for potential customers.
- Simplified finance jargon to design a marketing website that encourages customers to sign up.
- Robust infrastructure and security to safeguard customer data.
Immersing ourselves in the world of small business lending
Invoice lending is increasingly popular, but there’s a lot of nuance and financial jargon for business owners (and us!) to wrap our heads around. To inform the new marketplace, we dived into the world of invoice lending, immersing ourselves in this complex topic. We identified opportunities for this product to succeed in Aotearoa, where nothing like it exists currently.
We spent time interviewing experienced lenders and businesses seeking finance to understand common queries, expectations and misconceptions, before creating prototypes to test with potential customers. We became very aware of the anxieties money can cause, and how we could relieve that anxiety through access to invoice lending.
The needs of businesses and lenders were similar, with just one big difference: lenders wanted to see businesses’ accounts as part of due diligence, whereas businesses were reluctant to share their accounts with lenders they’d never met. We thought carefully about how to accommodate both these needs, designing an elegant solution to enable businesses to share just enough information to ensure lenders can do their due diligence, making both audience groups comfortable.
Establishing a sense of trust through design and content
The clean design inspires trust, feeling reliable, safe and secure. Using microcopy and visual design we’re clear about what’s happening behind-the-scenes, so it feels transparent and straightforward.
Our content designer took complex financial jargon and made it understandable for small businesses, whilst retaining technical terms for lenders with more knowledge. Our understanding of our customers means we surface the information people need, when they need it, making a trustworthy and easy experience. This attention to detail in design and content, along with simplified journeys, made it fast and easy for businesses to access finance despite the complexity of swift lending.
Built for security
With varying compliance needs, security and privacy were front of mind for lenders and businesses. Invoice Hub prioritises security by hosting on AWS, leveraging its robust infrastructure and security features to safeguard customer data. Documents are stored securely on SharePoint, ensuring encryption and access controls are enforced.
Custom workflows were implemented to ensure that sensitive customer information is handled securely, with industry-standard authentication and authorisation mechanisms in place to ensure privacy and maintain compliance with data protection regulations. Developed with Next.js for its frontend and Django with Wagtail for the backend, Invoice Hub leverages the strengths of each technology for optimal performance, security and user experience.
A seamless journey from marketing website to product
Taking a product-first approach allowed us to approach the marketing website equipped with deep knowledge of our audiences. We applied our understanding to define the story the marketing site should tell and the questions it needs to answer to reassure potential customers.
We created efficiencies by re-using front-end code from the product for the marketing website, which also makes it easier to update both the product and marketing website in future. It has the bonus of making a seamless, consistent journey from the marketing website to the product, adding to the sense of trust and ease customers feel.
“Seeing our hard work pay off, not just meeting but surpassing our targets was incredibly satisfying. The final product reflects our collective effort and is something we all take great pride in.”
Tammy Crause, Commercial Account Director, Invoice Hub
A product strategy to set Invoice Hub up for success
We used our product strategy approach to create a roadmap for Invoice Hub to shape the product’s direction, providing an exciting future to aspire to. The initial product, launched in 2023, tells a compelling story of why this service matters. Small and medium-sized businesses now have more choice, control and confidence when considering finance options. Business owners can choose from competitive loan offers, with timelines and terms that suit their needs. Approved lenders can plug into a hub of pre-vetted potential customers and broad lending opportunities.
We’re proud to have partnered with Invoice Hub to create a beautiful, secure and quick lending experience to help small businesses thrive.
“Getting to work on the product side of things was my favourite bit, making quite complicated flows simple and really stripping out all of the financial jargon. I really enjoyed that problem-solving aspect.”
Chloe Johnston, Senior Customer Experience Designer, Octave
