New billing platform.

Role

Senior product designer

Role

Senior product designer

Timeline
2022 - 2025

Project type
New platform design

Team
10 people

Impact

  • Led the design of the new billing platform experience on modernised architecture, enabling Paddle to deliver critical new features and significantly expand customer value.

  • Positioned Paddle to compete and lead in the global subscription billing and Merchant of Record market, driving new customer acquisition while improving retention of existing accounts.

  • Contributed to 48% year-on-year revenue growth on the new billing platform, supporting Paddle’s progression to Unicorn status (c. 2025/26).

• Time to Value was increased by surfacing key insights automatically and reducing user effort.


• Increased customer retention by solving a requested portal improvement.


• Helps win new deals and (POV) trials by delivering key values and enhanced reporting metrics to both the potential customer and our internal sales and support teams.

Problem

Problem

Paddle’s legacy billing platform was built on a monolithic architecture that no longer met modern standards. This limited our ability to scale, slowed feature development, and made it difficult to win new customers. At the same time, existing customers were requesting capabilities that were complex and time-consuming to deliver within the constraints of the old system.

Challenges

  • Rebuilding while redefining ways of working
    Design and back-end engineering had to collaborate in parallel on a brand-new architecture, requiring new prioritisation models, tighter feedback loops, and faster decision-making.

  • High impact, lean team
    A small team was responsible for delivering a business-critical platform transformation, demanding rigorous scope control and focus on what truly moved the needle.

  • Initial Fixed six-month MVP transformation deadline
    The entire product organisation committed to shipping a fully rebuilt billing platform within six months balancing architectural complexity with speed to market.

• Paddle’s migration team is small, how can we free up their time to build the solution and support effectively?


• How can we deliver a faster migration experience without increasing churn risk for customers or Paddle?


• Migration is highly complex, as many classic customers rely on custom setups and workarounds.

Solution

A new billing platform, including new user flows and new features.

The new billing platform will help make Paddle scalable, win more custom and be easier to maintain.

Improved current UX patterns and navigation.

Introduced new pro-ration feature, simplifying complex monthly subscription logic.

I worked on 6+ new areas of Paddle Billing during my time at Paddle.

Explored, tested and validated end consumer email and invoicing

At the beginning

We began with a high-level vision for the new architecture and a defined MVP scope, outlining the core experience and priority features. From there, the team came together for a three-day in-person working session.

We began with a high-level vision for the new architecture and a defined MVP scope, outlining the core experience and priority features. From there, the team came together for a three-day in-person working session.

Below is a list of things we covered in our three-day workshop. We spent half of our time as a team discussing the plans and group level thinking then we split off into smaller groups to focus on our specific goals. As a design team of two at the time we split the work up to divide and conquer making sure we could meet the deadlines.

• The workshop included several PM's, directors, engineers and design

• Validate assumptions and align on direction

• Review early hypothesis and user flows looking

• Prioritising work into stages and importance

• Defining what is and isn't in scope

• Discussing technical challenges which were yet to be met and how they may influence the roadmap

Discovery and learnings

Following early workshops I built and tested concept prototypes for initial flows.

Following early workshops I built and tested concept prototypes for initial flows.

Using Figma and the Usertesting.com. platform I was able to test early ideas and assumptions. In the first 6 months I worked on what we called a master prototype which allowed us to test various flows and patterns and connect all the initial launch flows together. Following the first release in 2023 I then have spent time testing and improving Paddles new billing platform year on year.

Solution

A self serve migration journey within the dashboard.

It will empower customers to manage their own migration while driving faster adoption of Paddle’s new billing platform.

Early customer insight highlighted what the platform was missing.

Spoke to many small, medium and large sized Paddle customers.

We used Ant library as a base for our design system allows us scale quickly.

I signed up to competitor platforms to learn how they approached billing.

Final Designs

Working across most areas of the new billing platform…

Subscription Management.

• Create, edit and manage subscription flows

• Create and edit subscription prices

• Simplifying proration understanding, turning complexity into a simple experience

Product creation & pricing.

• Create and edit subscription product pricing flow

• Country specific pricing (price overrides) flow

• Price name and description testing across the checkout, invoicing and dashboard

Discounts.

• Create, edit and manage discount flows

• Discount appearance from dashboard to invoices

Billing emails & invoices.

• End customer email and billing invoices experience to match subscription set up

• Designed email UX flows for all B2C emails including complex proration and subscription updates

• Ran usability studies frequently to make sure email were clear and usable

Mark Slater 2026