Mews Recurring Payments
A recurring payment solution that automates billing and improves clarity for hotels and guests.
Project at a Glance
What started as a simple need, automating recurring payments, turned into a complete redesign of how hotels and guests handle payments. This project brings that vision to life.
About the Product
Mews is a platform that helps hotels, co-working spaces, and membership-based businesses manage long-stay operations and payments. However, it lacks support for recurring payments, forcing operators to rely on manual workarounds for billing and payment.
We set out to design an automated, scalable solution that brings clarity to guests and efficiency to teams.
Problem
Imagine you’re running a hotel with hundreds of guests staying longer than a month. Some are digital nomads, some are corporate bookings. Each guest has a different payment schedule.
Now imagine your team manually creating bills, duplicating charges, setting reminders, tracking due dates, and chasing missed payments every single month. It’s time-consuming, error-prone, and unsustainable. These were exactly the problems we set out to solve.
The Team Behind the Solution
We were a 16-person cross-functional team brought together to tackle the complexity of recurring payments. Together, we collaborated to solve the complexity of recurring payments from both business and user perspectives.
My Role: Owning Design Across Business and UX
Led product design across research, UX, and business alignment:
✦ Strategized the solution – defined the vision, scoped the MVP, and aligned cross-functional teams
✦ Designed & tested recurring payment flows with real users through iterative feedback
✦ Delivered at scale – built a system-ready solution and enabled future automation phases
✦ Integrated AI tools – used AI to speed up design ideation, error message generation, and documentation
Solution
Mews Recurring Payments offers an all-in-one solution by automating recurring charges, supporting SEPA Direct Debit and card payments, and integrating billing automation to streamline invoicing, reconciliation, and payment operations.
Impact
The recurring payments project unlocked a more scalable and automated way for properties to manage long-stay billing. By introducing card and SEPA support, aligning payment timing with guest expectations, and integrating billing automation, we helped reduce manual workload while improving payment reliability.
Although actual numbers are confidential, the solution led to significant gains in fintech revenue, strong adoption across pilot properties, and measurable time saved during payment-related tasks. These results reflect both business and user-side impact.
+19%
Fintech Revenue Uplift
62%
Feature Adoption Rate
– 65%
Task Completion Time
Research
After the project kickoff, we defined our research goals and strategy, focusing on uncovering operational pain points and user expectations around recurring payments.
Listening First: Real Voices That Shaped the Direction
To understand the true pain points and expectations around recurring payments, I gathered insights from a wide range of stakeholders:
✦ 10+ hotels across multiple countries, with different sizes and business models (long stays, memberships, co-working)
✦ 40+ guests through surveys focused on transparency, predictability, and experience gaps
✦ Internal teams across revenue, finance, guest experience, marketing, pricing, content design, research, implementation, and support
These conversations helped us uncover system gaps, surface hidden complexities, and align on the challenges we needed to solve.
10+
Hotels Interviewed
40+
Guest Survey Responses
+8
Internal Team Consulted
What Was Broken for Guests & Hotels
I uncovered recurring payment issues that affected both guests and hotel teams. These insights shaped the foundation for our solution.
Recurring Revenue Use Cases We Focused On
These were the primary segments with the highest need for recurring billing and automation.
Competitive Insights: Recurring & Billing in the Market
I reviewed tools like Stripe, Adyen, and Chargebee to compare how they handle recurring billing, automation, and flexibility. This helped us spot what Mews was missing, and prioritize the features users needed most.
Ideation
With key insights in hand, we shifted our focus toward exploring solutions and translating research findings into actionable design ideas.
From Challenges to Possibilities: Framing the Right Question
To build an end-to-end recurring payment experience, we reframed key pain points into actionable “How Might We” questions to guide our design and development efforts.
👉 Scroll horizontally to explore how each opportunity connects to pain points and product solutions.
Designing With Impact: Strategic Decisions Behind Recurring Payments
To bring recurring payments to life, we had to make deliberate decisions about what to build, when, and why. This impact map helped us align short-term delivery with long-term scalability, balancing user needs, system dependencies, growth potential, and risks.
AI as a Research & Ideation Partner
To speed up insights and spark more informed ideas, I incorporated AI tools into both research synthesis and ideation.
Tools like ChatGPT, Dovetail AI tags, Useberry AI summaries, Miro AI clustering, and FigJam AI prompts helped me extract patterns, generate “How Might We” statements, and brainstorm directions more efficiently.
This approach allowed me to move faster, validate assumptions early, and focus more on designing meaningful experiences.
Design
We structured the design work in two clear phases. Phase 1 focused on launching an MVP and testing with beta users via the Guest Profile. Phase 2 expanded the experience for General Availability with billing automation and broader functionality. This phased approach allowed us to validate early and scale with confidence.
Built on Mews Design System Foundations
To ensure consistency, scalability, and development efficiency, we based all recurring payment components on the existing Mews Design System.
Phase 1: Recurring Automated Payments Through the Guest Profile (MVP)
Recurring Payment Flow Across Guest, Hotel & System
I designed this end-to-end journey to show how recurring payment plans are created, triggered, and communicated across hotel teams, guests, and the Mews system.
The flow changes depending on the first payment configuration, impacting the timing of bill creation, payment collection, and guest messaging.
👉 Scroll horizontally to explore Phase 1 user flows and the journey map behind the MVP release.
User Testing & Iteration – Phase 1 (MVP for Beta)
We conducted usability tests with beta users to validate the core experience of creating and managing recurring payments via the guest profile. Feedback helped us refine flows, clarify content, and ensure the end-to-end experience was understandable for both guests and staff.
Guest Experience: Simple and Clear
Guests receive a payment link where they can view their personalized payment schedule and select a payment method. Every step is supported with tailored messages and emails to ensure clarity and confidence throughout the process.
Phase 2: Advanced Billing Integration and Plan Management for General Availability (GA)
We expanded our MVP by integrating billing automation with recurring payments. This phase enabled payments to be charged based on bill amounts rather than static reservation totals. We also improved plan management with features like failed payment handling, cancelation options, and enhanced error visibility. This laid the foundation for full general availability.
User Testing & Iteration – Phase 2 (GA)
For the GA release, we are running user testing and demo sessions to validate advanced features like billing automation integration and payment plan customization. It’s still a work in progress, with a focus on improving system flexibility, logic clarity, and communication between hotel and guest.
AI in My Design Process
In my design process, I regularly use tools like Figma AI, ChatGPT, Figma Make, and Locofy to accelerate ideation and prototyping, while also leveraging Midjourney and DALL·E to explore creative directions. We also use Glean and experiment with different prompts to support our workflow and problem-solving.
Reflection
Impact
Our recurring payments project introduced a fully automated, flexible billing experience for long-stay reservations. Hotels can now set up recurring plans directly from the guest profile, enabling scheduled payments via SEPA or card without manual intervention. This significantly reduced operational load for front desk teams and improved clarity and transparency for guests.
+19%
Fintech Revenue Uplift
62%
Feature Adoption Rate
- 65%
Total Completion Time
Our work also laid the foundation for deeper system-wide automation by aligning billing logic with payment scheduling. While we can’t share exact figures, the project led to measurable time savings, faster payment completion, and increased adoption across early beta properties.
Next Step
We’re now focused on integrating billing automation directly into recurring payment flows. This will allow plans to be automatically assigned at the time of reservation, enabling properties to manage payments and billing entirely hands-off. We’re also exploring future management capabilities to further empower finance and ops teams. Throughout this phase, we’ll continue iterating based on user testing and demo feedback.
