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CommBank InstalPay at UPowr
UPowr is a SaaS product for managing solar and battery sales, installations, and servicing. When CommBank came on as an enterprise partner, they wanted us to integrate their new buy-now, pay-later product, InstalPay, into the customer journey. We'd never done anything like this before.
The work touched almost every customer-facing surface: what customers saw on their quote, how they understood their repayments with InstalPay, how they applied for it, and every email and text along the way.
I led product and content design across two teams: UPowr's project team building the integration, and CommBank's product and legal teams, who approved every customer-facing detail.
Designing the customer journey
We started with workshops. Solar and battery sales were a new area for CommBank's product team, so we walked them through how a system is designed, what's legally required on a quote, and what happens during an install. They came back with the InstalPay requirements covering who could apply, what they'd pay, and how the application would run.
From there, we worked through the customer journey. I added information about InstalPay to early nurture emails, to prime customers before they received their quote. For the quote, I designed a simple repayment calculator to show them their monthly cost, so they could compare it with their estimated monthly savings. I also designed the checkout journey, which redirected them to the CommBank app to apply for InstalPay before they returned to UPowr to schedule their install.
The harder design problem turned out to be the exceptions. The InstalPay promise was approval in seconds, but sometimes it took longer, sometimes the customer was declined, and sometimes they just abandoned it. Every one of these states needed UX copy and an email to explain what happened and what they could do about it.
The comms layer
The customer journey included around 30 emails and SMS. I rewrote every nudge, confirmation, reminder, and update from quote request through to installed system, and authored six new messages for InstalPay-specific moments, including approved, declined, application cancelled, and rebate initiated.
The harder choices were about warmth. Finding the right tone for moments that could have felt cold. Approval, decline, application cancelled. Each one needed to feel like a person speaking, not a process.
It looks like your CommBank InstalPay application isn't going ahead. We hope this isn't the end of your clean energy journey.
Each email and SMS went through CommBank's product and legal teams, with many including a footer disclaimer we wrote together.
Outcomes
InstalPay launched in October 2023, when CommBank announced UPowr as the first merchant on the new product.
The partnership lasted about 18 months. CommBank discontinued InstalPay in 2025, following changes to regulations that affected how short-term credit could be offered. The work shaped how we approached partnerships afterwards. The comms patterns, the way of working with CommBank's legal team, and the shape of a customer journey across two organisations.
Key lesson
The work, it turned out, was mostly language. I went into this thinking the design challenge was the journey. The calculator, the redirect, the checkout. The deeper challenge turned out to be the words. Banks have to be precise, and their customers need to feel like they're speaking to a person. Most of the design effort went into closing that gap.