Seamless
earning & spending experience
Decathlon Wallet was a strategic payments and customer retention
initiative designed to transform €100M+ of fragmented, unused customer value into a seamless digital balance customers could easily discover
and spend.
Summery
Organisational Impact
The Wallet shifted the conversation from separate loyalty, payment, refund and gift-card programmes to one customer-value ecosystem.
I aligned Payments, POS, Loyalty, Finance, CRM, Product and Digital orgs around a shared vision creating a common experience direction, business case and phased roadmap across previously fragmented ownership.
This established the foundation for one omnichannel Wallet platform, rather than individual teams continuing to optimise disconnected forms of customer value.
Role in the work:
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Led the product vision, strategy and experience direction for Decathlon Wallet.
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Identified and quantified the customer and commercial opportunity, shaping the €141M business case.
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Reframed fragmented credits, rewards, refunds and gift cards into a unified customer-value platform.
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Defined the omnichannel experience strategy across checkout, app and physical stores.
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Aligned senior stakeholders across Payments, POS, Loyalty, Finance, CRM, Product and Digital.
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Connected customer insight, financial impact and experience strategy to influence investment and prioritisation.
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Established the strategic foundation and phased roadmap for scaling the Wallet across markets.
Financial Impact
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€141M estimated revenue opportunity from improving redemption, retention and recirculation of customer value.
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€300M+ activated annually across Decathlon prepaid value.
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~€60M
in unused prepaid balances, representing significant existing purchasing power.
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€200M+
estimated opportunity from unconverted loyalty points across 9M+ members.
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~1/3
of refunded value leaving the Decathlon ecosystem rather than driving repeat purchases.
The context
Decathlon had €300M+ in customer value activated annually across gift cards, rewards, refunds and promotional credits, but these were fragmented across different systems and experiences.
Customers struggled to discover and spend value they already owned, contributing to €60M in unused prepaid balances and significant missed loyalty and retention opportunities.
The opportunity was to turn this fragmentation into one balance, one Wallet, available everywhere, online and in-store.
The challenge
Customer value was fragmented across gift cards, loyalty rewards, refunds and promotional credits, making it difficult to discover and spend.
Internally, these experiences were owned by different teams and systems, creating complexity and fragmented decision-making.
The challenge was to unify this value into a simple omnichannel experience that could increase redemption, strengthen retention and scale across Decathlon.
The Process
I led the Wallet from opportunity identification through vision, business case and rollout strategy. I combined customer insight, behavioural and financial data to quantify the opportunity, reframed fragmented credits into a unified customer-value proposition, and defined the omnichannel experience across digital and physical retail. I then aligned senior leaders across Payments, POS, Loyalty, Finance, CRM and Product around a shared vision and phased path to delivery.
01 — Quantifying the opportunity
I partnered with the Director of Product and Data Insights team to connect customer friction with the underlying commercial opportunity. Together, we combined customer research, behavioural data and financial analysis across prepaid cards, loyalty, refunds and promotional credits.
My role was to translate these insights into the product and experience opportunity—connecting the numbers to customer behaviour and building the strategic case for a unified Wallet.
What this established: What initially looked like fragmented UX problems represented a significant customer and commercial opportunity.
The analysis revealed:
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€300M+ activated annually across prepaid value
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~€60M remained unused
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9M+ loyalty members held unconverted points
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€200M+ estimated opportunity from unconverted loyalty value
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~1/3 of refunds left the Decathlon ecosystem
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€141M estimated revenue opportunity
02 — Turning insight into a strategic proposition
With the opportunity quantified, I set the direction for a cross-functional workshop to determine what the Wallet should actually become. I delegated facilitation to a Staff Designer, while staying closely involved through coaching, synthesis and decision-making.
The workshop exposed a clear pattern: customers had strong intent—~30% converted points into vouchers—yet only 14% of online voucher redeemers purchased within a week. Vouchers were fragmented across multiple entry points, difficult to retrieve and redeem, and customers had no clear view of their total stored value.
That evidence led us to define the MVP as a centralised financial layer where customers could access, understand and use vouchers, gift cards and payment methods through one consistent experience.
The workshop translated the strategy into six product principles: consistent and recognisable, instantly accessible, real-time and trustworthy, embedded across the journey, clearly scoped, and measurable through business impact.
We then prioritised the first use cases around visibility of stored value, financial asset management, seamless redemption, instant access, expiry awareness and CRM activation—creating a tangible bridge from strategic vision to MVP.
The strategic proposition: Create a secure, centralized omnichannel hub that combines all Decathlon rewards, gift cards, and preferred payment methods into a single unified balance enabling effortless one-click payments across both online and in-store experiences.
To align the cross-functional matrix spanning Loyalty, Payments, POS, Finance, CRM, Commercial, and Engineering, this vision is anchored in a shared strategic narrative built on customer pain points, experience gaps, market benchmarks, financial opportunity sizing, and technical feasibility shifting teams from isolated program silos into a unified customer value ecosystem.
My role: I set the strategic direction, delegated and coached the Staff Designer leading the workshop, and worked with Product and Data to turn the findings into a defined proposition, prioritised MVP and measurable outcomes.
03 — Directing and validating the experience vision
With the MVP defined, I worked closely with a Staff Designer leading the end-to-end experience and Product Designers embedded across individual domains.
My role was to create clarity around the problem, establish the quality bar, and give designers autonomy to find the strongest solutions, while staying close enough to the craft to identify where the experience could be materially better. We coupled design production with remote user testing, using customer feedback to challenge assumptions and continuously refine the concepts.
This created a tight loop:
Set direction → Design → Test with customers → Learn → Refine
Rather than prescribing individual screens, I focused on ensuring that customer evidence, experience quality and end-to-end coherence remained consistent across Wallet, checkout, web, app and in-store journeys.
The result: a customer-validated experience direction that teams could own and evolve without losing the integrity of the overall Wallet vision.
3.01 — Wallet overview
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Virtual Wallet Overhaul: Consolidates stored payment methods, refunded value, converted loyalty points, and existing gift cards into one unified wallet for seamless cross-channel (e-commerce and retail) use.
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Customer Pain Points Resolved: Addresses frustration around expired gift cards, multi-card usage friction, and unspent reward balances that previously hurt customer trust in Decathlon's loyalty program.
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Simplified Points Overview: Streamlines the conversion view to improve transparency and build member understanding around how points are earned and valued.
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'Headless' Flexible Conversion: Enables members to access and redeem their points at any stage of the shopping journey, starting from the account section to anywhere a user logs in.
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Expected Impact: Designed to reduce checkout friction, lift immediate Conversion Rate (CVR), and boost long-term NPS and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) by making rewards easier to earn and spend.
3.02 — Points, structure and customer control
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Real-Time Points & Control: Displays live, updated points balances with clear transaction reasons and an undo option, giving customers complete confidence and control over their rewards.
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Conversion Impact Clarity: Provides an explicit screen showing the immediate effect of conversions on a customer's total points value.
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Upgraded Payment Management: Replaces rigid checkout-only card setups with a centralized, easy-to-manage "wallet" where customers can freely save, edit, and select preferred payment methods beforehand.
3.03 — Points conversion and Reward redemption
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Upstream Points Discovery: Extends points conversion and redemption prompts into earlier shopping stages, specifically placing balance reminders in the Upper Funnel, basket header, and order summary.
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Streamlined Basket Redemption: Enables eligible members to convert and apply points directly within the basket, removing historical friction around redeeming vouchers, promo codes, and rewards.
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Consistent & Reversible Experience: Reuses the standardized account conversion flow for familiarity, delaying the backend point conversion until final order placement so actions remain easily reversible.
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Transparent Pricing & Control: Displays converted rewards clearly in order totals at all times and explicitly separates points from promo codes to give members greater control and build trust.
3.04 — Payment method management
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Unified Checkout Balance: Integrates all stored monetary value into a single, cohesive wallet space within the checkout flow, styled seamlessly alongside standard payment methods.
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On-the-Fly Balance Management: Enables customers to check balances, apply partial or full amounts, and add gift cards directly at checkout without navigating back to account pages.
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Omnichannel Decoupling: Decentralizes wallet data across touchpoints, making it effortless for members to use flexible payment options in both digital e-commerce and physical retail stores.
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Reduced Cognitive Load: Overhauls the legacy payments page to clarify checkout steps and provide better context, directly resolving a top research pain point.
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Confidence-Boosting Overviews: Refines small design details and ensures clear, consistent purchasing information to give customers total confidence before placing an order.
3.05 — In-store authentication & redemption
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Frictionless Till Authentication: Customers reach the register, launch the Decathlon app, and securely log in using biometrics. A quick scan of their personal QR code instantly authenticates their account and links their session to the till.
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Automated Balance Recognition: Once authenticated, the system instantly identifies the customer and calculates all eligible rewards and gift balances into a clear, single monetary value directly on the screen.
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Default Savings Application: The calculated wallet credit is automatically applied to the customer's active bag by default, immediately lowering their total due without requiring manual intervention or code entering.
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Streamlined Final Payment: The customer reviews their updated, discounted total and completes the remaining transaction effortlessly, closing the loop on a fast and rewarding checkout experience.
04 — Aligning multiple teams around a shared vision
Wallet crossed organisational boundaries. Payments, Loyalty, POS, Finance, CRM, e-commerce and individual product teams each owned part of the customer-value ecosystem, but no single team could deliver the vision independently. I used the emerging experience vision as an alignment tool, bringing leaders and domain experts together around a common customer problem rather than individual team mandates.
The conversation was grounded in four things:
Customer evidence → Experience vision → Commercial opportunity → Technical dependencies
This allowed us to make dependencies and trade-offs explicit, clarify ownership, and establish where the Wallet should sit within the broader product ecosystem. The workshop documentation, for example, captured the need to align Wallet with Personalised Rewards, e-commerce dependencies, design ownership, engineering effort and outcome tracking.
Critically, alignment wasn't just stakeholder buy-in. It translated the vision into ownership and investment conversations. The work identified existing discovery funding of €0.4M, the need for additional build funding, and the design and engineering work required to move toward an MVP.
My role: I connected the customer experience to the organisational system required to deliver it—creating shared context, resolving ambiguity between domains, and aligning senior stakeholders around the proposition, dependencies, ownership and path forward.
05 — Impact
Financial impact
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€141M estimated revenue opportunity identified through increased redemption, retention and recirculation of customer value.
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€300M+ annual prepaid value brought into the strategic opportunity space.
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~€60M unused prepaid value identified as an immediate redemption opportunity.
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€200M+ potential value associated with unconverted loyalty points across 9M+ members.
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€0.4M existing discovery funding connected to the initial path toward implementation; additional build funding was still required.
Customer impact
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Reframed fragmented vouchers, gift cards and credits into one accessible customer-value experience.
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Established an MVP around visibility, instant access, seamless redemption and expiry awareness.
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Created a customer-validated omnichannel direction spanning web, app, checkout and in-store.
Organisational impact
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Aligned Payments, POS, Loyalty, Finance, CRM, Product and e-commerce around a shared Wallet proposition.
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Shifted the organisation from treating rewards and payment assets as separate initiatives toward a unified customer-value strategy.
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Established MVP scope, product principles, prioritised use cases, ownership and dependencies required to move the vision toward delivery.
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Created a foundation for teams to move from vision → funded discovery → MVP design → engineering alignment → implementation planning.