Shaped strategy for contactless public transit payments

The Challenge

For over 1.8 million daily users of the Mexico City Metro, paying for a commute is a fragmented experience heavily reliant on cash, exact change, adding money, planning trips and spending, paying, and dealing with problems like low balance or a lost card. Visa and Santander wanted to introduce a competitive, digital contactless payment solution that could become a "top of wallet" choice for these riders. The core problem wasn't just technical; it was behavioral. We needed to understand how to transition users from deeply ingrained cash habits to a digital ecosystem without creating new friction during their high stress daily commutes.

Transit users approach their daily commutes with vastly different financial realities and mental models. While some riders prioritize pure convenience, to the point where they would rather buy a brand new transit card than go back home if they forgot theirs, others calculate their daily transit budget down to the exact peso to ensure they can pick up their children on time. Any viable digital payment solution had to be flexible enough to support both the spontaneous traveler and the meticulous budgeter.

The Approach

We approached this challenge with a mixed-methods strategy:

1. Competitive Benchmarking and Desk Research: Analyzed traditional Mexican debit card products and global neobanks to identify best practices in customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. Applied Signature Moments and Blue Ocean Strategy frameworks to identify market opportunities and key moments in the customer journey.
2. In-Depth Qualitative Interviews: Designed and conducted 120-minute foundational research sessions to understand commuters' daily routines, budgeting habits, and concerns about adopting digital payments.
3. Contextual Interviews and Field Observation: Conducted field research at Mexico City's Metro stations, 12 in-depth interviews, 18 contextual interviews, 10 “mystery transit” rides, 10 benchmark cases and validation with 16 riders, observing real world behaviors and interviewing commuters to identify unmet needs, barriers, and opportunities within the existing transit payment ecosystem.
4. User Co-Creation: Facilitated concept exploration exercises with participants to understand their expectations and gather feedback on potential solutions, including virtual cards, wearable payment devices, and onboarding incentives.
5. Stakeholder Alignment and Co-Creation Workshops: Facilitated collaborative workshops with 20 cross-functional stakeholders from Visa and Santander to align perspectives, explore opportunities, and establish a shared North Star vision for the future experience.
6. Validation Testing: Tested the proposed value proposition, onboarding concepts, and functional priorities through 16 validation interviews.
7. Omnichannel Service Blueprinting: Mapped the end-to-end service experience across physical and digital touchpoints, connecting current-state and future-state journeys to identify friction points, process gaps, and opportunities to improve adoption.

My Contributions

Understanding the system

• Understanding the system: I co-led the foundational and longitudinal research, analyzing both the competitive fintech landscape and real-world commuter behaviors.
• Collaboration of the analysis and report for the competitive benchmarking and desk research, by synthesizing our field data into distinct behavioral profiles, I uncovered the underlying fears and motivators driving transit users, translating raw qualitative data into clear strategic constraints.
• Co-facilitated ideation and co-creation sessions with SMEs and clients.
• Co-led the presentation of findings and stakeholder alignment discussions with clients.

Redesigning the experience

• Created a service blueprint covering 13 stages before, during, and after a trip, from first hearing about the product to reporting a stolen card. Mapped the current and future journeys side by side, showing both analog and digital actions at each step.This artifact aligned analog physical touchpoints (like turnstiles, subway ads, and convenience store deposits) with digital app interactions (like balance notifications and reward programs), allowing us to identify strategic opportunities, anticipate service blockers, and define a clear implementation strategy.
• Translated the findings into an implementation strategy and recommendations for stakeholders, anticipating gaps and blockers

Outcome

The service blueprint provided a clear, structural foundation that aligned stakeholders around a cohesive end-to-end user journey. Beyond prioritizing functional features like a "Travel Guarantee" (emergency balance to build trust) and digital card blocking, the project outcomes established a comprehensive go-to-market framework.

We developed targeted customer acquisition and communication strategies to effectively introduce the product to potential users, alongside low-friction conversion and onboarding workflows specifically designed to transition cash-reliant commuters into a digital ecosystem. By translating our research findings into an actionable implementation strategy, we designed a roadmap that established immediate quick wins alongside a broader 5 year vision, ultimately helping expand digital access across a transit system serving 1.8M+ users