Shop Pay installments

Context

In 2020, I led IC design for the buyer experience of Shop Pay Installments across pre-purchase, checkout, and post-purchase. The product built on top of Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout, and aimed to give buyers a flexible way to pay for higher-value purchases without adding friction to checkout. The opportunity was clear, but so were the risks: buy now, pay later was still emerging, buyer sentiment was mixed, and we were careful not to position Shopify as a lender-first brand.

Research & Framing

This was a research-heavy project from the start. We combined partner insights, a survey of roughly 1,000 respondents, and in-depth interviews with more than 20 buyers to understand expectations, concerns, and decision-making around installments. I worked closely with researchers throughout, helping shape the problem space and translate the findings into product decisions. One of the most important insights was that buyers often saw installments as a helpful budgeting tool, but interest-bearing models introduced hesitation and cognitive overhead at the moment of purchase.

Designing for Trust

A major design challenge was deciding how much information to show, and when, so buyers could make an informed choice without feeling overwhelmed. We led with a simple four-pay, no-interest model for smaller purchases and designed the flow so buyers could clearly compare paying in full versus paying over time, understand their approval state, and move forward with confidence. Because this wasn't the kind of financial product you ship lightly and fix later, we spent significant time designing for edge cases, especially around approvals, rejections, and moments where trust could break down.

Post-purchase Experience

The most interesting part of the work was post-purchase. Installments stretch a single purchase across six weeks, and once buyers have overlapping orders, upcoming charges, refunds, and delivery timelines, it becomes easy to lose track of what's happening. I focused on making that experience legible across web and app, so buyers could understand their payment schedule, see what was charged and what was next, and stay informed through email and push notifications. We also made sure buyers didn't need the Shop app to manage their payments, which kept the experience accessible and reduced dependency on a single channel.

Validation & Delivery

We validated the experience through repeated unmoderated task-based testing and gave participants real gift card funds so they could go through flows with actual stakes instead of hypothetical intent. That helped us catch where people got stuck and evaluate the experience under more realistic conditions. Throughout the project, we also instrumented key flows, set up tripwires for performance, and reviewed the work regularly with UX and business stakeholders. The result was a simple experience on the surface, backed by a lot of careful systems thinking underneath.

Outcomes

By the time I left Shopify in April 2021, just a few months after launch, Shop Pay Installments had already become the largest installments provider in the US by merchant count. It accounted for 7% of Shop Pay orders and 15% of overall installments volume on Shopify, which showed how quickly buyers and merchants adopted it. For me, the strongest outcome was that we shipped a financial product with meaningful complexity in a way that felt clear, lightweight, and trustworthy.

Reflections

This project taught me a lot about working with third parties and about staying opinionated without becoming rigid. Many constraints turned out to be less fixed than they first appeared, and I learned how important it is to document unresolved UX opportunities and revisit them as the product matures. If I did it again, I'd push earlier for easier testing infrastructure, use internal behavioral data sooner, and stay more closely involved through build and QA to protect the details that matter in a high-trust experience.