Background
I joined CarIQ, an early-stage company, at a pivotal moment and led design and part of the engineering efforts as we transitioned from a fleet management platform to a fleet-focused payment solution.
We recognized that existing payment providers were offering insecure, high-friction experiences to over 60 million cardholders. This insight shaped our direction.
We started by asking some fundamental questions across three areas of the payment experience:
Building identity for vehicles
To issue a payment method to vehicles, we first needed to create a verifiable identity for each one. The company already had the capability to ingest vehicle data, so I worked closely with the data and engineering teams to build the mechanism to turn that data to a vehicle authentication token.
This system became the heat of CarIQ IP and enabled us to verify vehicles at the time of transaction before issuing a payment token for them.
Creating a seamless experience
The system was utilizing the VIN to identify vehicles but manually entering the number was a cumbersome task. So I asked how that can be simplified. I used mobile and vehicle location data to display the vehicle to the driver’s profile.
Building blocks for the ultimate vision
Our ultimate goal was to create an in-dash experience. As an interim solution, I designed two mobile apps to showcase our vision.
One of our fraud mitigation techniques involved using vehicle location to pre-select a gas station within the app. However, after several field studies, we discovered that occasional latency in the vehicle data affected the timely display of nearby stations.
To address this, we expanded the search radius and allowed drivers to manually select the correct gas station if multiple options were detected. While this improved usability, it introduced trade-offs in both user experience and transaction security.
I updated the app logic and risk engine to preserve a smooth user experience whenever possible while maintaining strong fraud protections.
The fueling exprience
Once the security checks and selection are passed, the driver only needed to select the pump and start fueling.
We partnered with P97, the primary software provider for the gas-stations in the US and accessed the pump information and used their API to go through all the fueling steps.
Post fueling events
After the fueling event, with our access to the vehicle data, we could verify the fuel level. If the measured level was below a certain threshold, we flagged the transaction for review in our admin panel.
Project takeaways
The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.. only transformed from one form to another. I believe the same principle applies to complexity.
The solution I designed at CarIQ appears elegant and simple, but that simplicity wasn’t achieved by eliminating complexity. Instead, it was transformed—from the user interface into several supporting subsystems behind the scenes.
While developing this complex system wasn’t cheap, the value of our innovative approach to reducing overhead and fraud risk was clear to our investors. My contributions to the design and on-time delivery of the product played a key role in helping the company secure $15 million in new investment.