Case 02 · PayPal · 2020–21

Merchant Settings

Unifying fragmented account settings into a Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

FinTechInformation ArchitectureSettings UX

What is Settings

A merchant's account settings control their entire business operation — payment configuration, team access, settlement routing, integrations, security. But across PayPal's platform, settings had grown into a sprawl.

The goal: rebuild a unified, cross-product account settings framework that simplified deep configuration patterns, drastically improved discoverability, and produced visual harmony across the merchant environment.

Problem statement (Why was this needed?)

Different product lines featured disjointed navigation patterns. The same conceptual setting lived in three places, named three different things.

Inconsistency — Settings styled and structured differently across products.
Poor discoverability — Merchants frequently called support rather than search the UI.
No shared architecture — Each new product team built settings UI from scratch.
No JTBD framing — Settings were organised by backend taxonomy, not by what merchants came to accomplish.

The redesign needed to deliver a substrate every future feature could build on — not just a refreshed coat of paint.

User research & synthesis

Inconsistency across products

Audited the legacy navigation across product lines to surface the gap between what merchants expected and what each product shipped.

Settings inconsistencies across PayPal products

Competitor analysis

Direct and adjacent competitors

Benchmarked direct payments competitors and adjacent SaaS settings patterns — the patterns worth borrowing, and the ones to reject.

Competitor analysis — settings patterns across the industry

Information architecture

Unifying 3 products without breaking mental models

Each PayPal product had its own settings taxonomy and navigation logic. My job was to unify these into one coherent IA while preserving how existing merchants already understood where things lived — so the new structure felt familiar, not disruptive.

Existing IA — fragmented across product lines — Before: three different settings architectures across products — inconsistent naming, navigation depth, and grouping.

Final IA — hybrid Jobs-To-Be-Done model — The winner — a hybrid JTBD model structured around real business goals: Get Paid, Manage Team, Security, Grow.

Final screens

Designing the unified experience

Three settings surfaces redesigned on the new IA — merchant, account, profile — sharing the same navigation grammar and component patterns.

Vision & future concepts

Where the settings product is heading

Future-state concepts for the settings product — merchant, account, and profile surfaces sketched on the new IA backbone, signalling where the experience goes next.