Open Project

Leading design for Square payments

Head of Design for Payments · squareup.com · 2017 – 2020

$106Bprocessed by Square sellers in 2019
50+cross-org designers interviewed and hired
16designers on the team I built

Building and leading the Payments design team

Square operates with a decentralized model where Design Directors – sitting on staff-level leadership teams – report directly to General Managers, each responsible for an organizational unit. As the Design Director on Payments, I built and led a team of 16 designers within an organization size of 300+. While on Payments, my team led design for what eventually became Square Bank.

Influencing Square Design

As the second external design director Square had ever hired, I helped build and shape the company’s design processes, including hiring, the career ladder, design review best practices, and design systems integration.

Payments design team celebrating the SFDW award

Fostering a healthy culture

To help influence the Payments organizational culture, I led internal branding projects to create a recognizable identity. Additionally, time was dedicated to building and creating a tight-knit design team.

Designing an end-to-end Payments experience

The Payments Design team was responsible for onboarding sellers to accept payments, payments entry experiences, deposits & money management flows, and Square Card. Additionally, the team inherited Square's Help & Support and Risk product experiences.

Onboarding
Getting a new seller set up to accept payments.
Identity Verification
Confirming who’s behind the account.
Payments
The entry experiences at the point of sale.
Deposits & Square Card
Money management and instant withdrawals.
Risk
Fraud and risk product experiences.
Support
Help & Support across the product.

Localizing onboarding for everyone

Square is available in multiple locales. Designing onboarding experiences required localizing massive flows for each language – hundreds of screens in total.

Cross-collaborating to create seamless activation

The team worked with compliance and legal teams to make our IDV process seamless.

Working with multiple form factors to design Payments

Square is offered on a wide variety of devices, including custom hardware. Some designers worked with custom-built hardware and screens.

Square Card, the foundation of banking

The Square Card design, led by Mac Cormier and Michael Tomkins from the Payments Design team, required navigating internal and external organizations, and involved collaborating with over 150 team members from design, product, marketing, legal, risk, compliance, and executives. The team received an SFDW award for Best in Fintech and has been editorially publicized globally.

Square Card marketing creative direction, animation, and illustration led by Square Marketing Design Team.

Square Payments user experience flows

The Payments Design Team was responsible for many platforms, locales, and surfaces – both digital and physical. Every flow was thoroughly designed to cover all edge cases in pixel-perfect detail.