All The Small Things — Simplifying Self Assessment payments in the HMRC App
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It’s been a few months since the Self Assessment deadline came and went again and 2 years since you’ve been able to pay it using the HMRC mobile app. And as far we can tell, people like using it.
Well, as much as you can like having to pay your tax bill. I don’t know anyone who gets excited about paying a tax bill but if you have to, why not make it as easy, simple and painless as possible? So that’s what we set out to do when we implemented it in the app.
Open Banking
In mid-2021 the ability to pay bills on the GOV.UK website by card or direct debit had long been possible and the Payments team had recently launched Open Banking (or Pay By Bank as HMRC called it). Open Banking, which incurs much lower transaction fees than other payment methods, allows the details of a payment to be passed to the bank securely so you don’t need to go through the hassle of copying bank details or references manually (which sometimes people did incorrectly causing all sorts of problems). With the feature on the web live we’d been asked if we could add a similar feature in the app.
Now it might not sound it — what’s the big deal it’s just a payment journey, it’s nothing new — but for us, it was a big deal and a great challenge. The thing for us was that the app wasn’t very transactional. It was primarily a way to view information rather than do anything so this would be an opportunity to have something more transactional in the app.
The App gets Self Assessment
At the time we didn’t have anything in the app that you would need to pay so it meant having to do that first and we chose Self Assessment, which wasn’t yet in the app. We knew people were already asking for Self Assessment so adding it would help those customers and give us a way to have something for people to pay. So we set to work speaking to customers, understanding their pain points and gathering any insights the web team had learnt when they implemented it on their platform.
Understanding differences
By the time we put basic flows together, there weren’t huge differences between what the web had and what was being proposed for the app but there were 2 things we needed to consider.
- On the web you had multiple ways to pay but on the app there would only be one, Open Banking. For other methods, you would need to continue your journey on the web.
- The very nature of using an app comes with an expectation of swiftness so whatever we could do to make this as quick and seamless as possible was key.
A single way to pay (or these other options)
We only had Open Banking to implement and knew that with the HMRC app and your bank app being on the same device, we didn’t need to worry about QR codes which would speed up the experience slightly, but we also knew that customers would expect other payment methods, so we’d need to include them, or at least a way to get to them.
We knew from user research that customers often stick to their previous method of payment but we thought if we highlighted this new feature customers might try it. And in testing, they did. By putting Open Banking front and centre, customers understood it as the “preferred” method and that there were other options but they were willing to give it a go. The structure of the screen helped them quickly understand it compared to the equal weighting of all the options on the web, thereby speeding up the journey.
Before you ask, of course, some people were never going to change their method of payment but this wasn’t about forcing a change of behaviour for everyone, but rather making the app’s options immediately clear and reducing the time it took to complete the journey.
“This is the one thing you are being asked to focus on. You might miss it otherwise as all the screens look very similar. Whereas this stops you and focus.”
— Customer, User Testing Session
Sheets vs full screens
Some banks have different apps for different types of accounts so in some cases we needed to ask an additional question about the account type. Typically we’d have used a separate screen for this as the web had done, but instead, we used a bottom sheet. Sheets help people perform tasks related to the current task, displaying additional content or actions (Source: Apple Human Interface Guidelines and Google Material Design). Although there are technically a similar number of taps someone would need to make had it been a separate screen, the cognitive load is reduced because the entire screen doesn’t refresh and so a customer can focus solely on the change that has just occurred thereby speeding up their ability to understand, action and get to the next screen.
One button or two
These improvements were shaving small amounts of time off the journey but the biggest impact occurred on the screen that initiated making a payment, the Self Assessment summary screen. Traditionally there would be a single button to make a payment but we added 2, one for the full amount and one for a custom amount.
When we initially started speaking to customers one of the first things we realised was that most customers would pay the full amount. In fact, over 70% of customers pay the full amount due. This meant that if we added a button that let them do that we could skip the screen asking them to tell us the amount they wanted to pay. So we did just that, while of course keeping the option to pay what you want. This simple button has been the biggest driver for the reduction in time it takes to complete a payment.
Conclusion
Each of these small changes has had a big impact on improving the overall experience a customer has had making a payment while reducing the time it takes for them to complete it. We are still making improvements to the HMRC App payment journey because there is always something that can be better but if you have used it we’d love to hear what your experience of it was.
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