How One Human-Centered Insight Led to $4 Billion in Growth for American Express
As a cornerstone project of IDEO’s financial services work, I led two campaigns to highlight the development of Pay It Plan It, a product that offers American Express (AmEx) cardholders greater financial transparency over lending needs. Our goal was to communicate how a human-centered approach to product design led to organizational transformation at AmEx and increased engagement with Millennials and Generation Z cardholders.
Client: American Express
Role: Editorial direction, project management, client management
Deliverable: Case study published on IDEO.com & an oral history published on The IDEO Journal
Collaborators: Anna Silverstein, Andrew Blum, English Taylor, Jenna Neveu, Jessica Randazza-Pade, and Sarah Rich, FagoStudio
Context
AmEx approached IDEO to help identify what Millennial and Generation Z cardholders wanted from a credit card. After interviewing more than 120 cardholders to understand payment and spending behaviors, IDEO prototyped and refined an industry-first concept called Pay It Plan It—a credit card feature that offers consumers more transparency and control over their finances. Since launch, AmEx cardholders have created 5 million plans on Pay It Plan It, totaling $4 billion in growth.
Pay It Plan It is a set of features that lets cardholders split up larger purchases of $100 or more into monthly payments for a fixed fee with no interest, and quickly pay for purchases under $100 throughout the month.
Case Study
Financial products that offer flexibility and transparency have been needed for years, but they are especially critical in times of economic uncertainty like today. To highlight IDEO’s work with AmEx, I directed IDEO’s first public-facing campaign on the impact of Pay It Plan It.
The process required in-depth interviews with key project leads, rigorous synthesis to distill a complex product into a digestible narrative, and close collaboration with the client’s communications and legal teams.
The case study was launched alongside AmEx PR efforts and is a live asset for business development conversations.
Oral History
To complement the formal case study, I led an additional marketing workstream published on The IDEO Journal. The Journal features leading voices, insights, and solutions at the intersection of design and business. We interviewed key stakeholders to recount the development of Pay It Plan It through an oral history.
Unlike the case study, our goal was to show how transforming an insight about consumer behavior into a new tool required a particular flavor of corporate agility. Bringing Pay It Plan It to life required a substantial technical and financial investment, affecting everything from payment terms to the way the smartphone app handled swipes.
For many, it marked a new way of working within the company, a transformational shift in the way ideas are conceived and implemented.
“I often talk about [the project] in terms of learning a new language. Amex internally thinks of itself as a rational company based on CBAs and models. The breakthrough—and the thing I’m most proud of—was bringing that customer emotion into internal decision-making, seeing Amex become emotional rather than purely rational.”