PayPal Credit

Today [October 7, 2015], we’re announcing the expansion of PayPal Credit Easy Payments, which has been live on Apple.com in the US and UK since December 2014, with several large merchants, including Shop.com, Keurig and Canon in the US; and Chain Reaction Cycles in the UK. PayPal Credit is also now working with several exclusive partners to introduce installment financing to German consumers.

-Steve Allocca, VP & General Manager, Global Credit, PayPal

In 2014 PayPal Credit introduced Easy Payments to the US with an exclusive partnership on Apple; in 2015 our goal was to integrate Easy Payments into checkout for any customer in the US and UK. Easy Payments allowed users to more easily finance large purchases by spreading out their payments over time, provided merchants with hands-off financing products that would appeal their customers, and allow PayPal to expand their integration with higher ticket merchants.

This created three distinct design challenges:

• How to introduce the offer without disrupting the user’s checkout experience and potentially reducing conversion rates.
• How to empower consumers to make an educated decision between the two credit offers, “Easy Payments” and “No Payments No Interest” (NPNI).
• How to provide regulatory-required disclosures and numbers without overwhelming our users, many of which already had apprehensions and confusion over credit in general.

As design team lead, I worked directly with the cross-functional design team, product leads, and the engineering team to understand the impact of introducing a new twist on an old product into our customers’ purchasing experience. Do no harm quickly became our mantra, as we were introducing a potential barrier to task completion at a pivotal moment in the checkout process.

We had seen in the earlier, limited launch of Easy Payments user confusion around the product offer and PayPal Credit in general. Our design hypothesis was that by increasing comprehension, we would reduce drop-offs, educate users, and meet the overall business goals.

With the product designer and content strategist, the team iterated over several concepts for the “Offer Page”, the main section of the flow impacted by the introduction of Easy Payments.

As team lead, I was responsible for engaging the PayPal research team, formulating the testing plan and timeline, and directing the team in order to the designs and prototypes ready for usability testing. 

We went into three cycles of usability testing in Q4 of 2015, each round helping us get closer to a design that increased usability, comprehension, and met the business goals.

Easy Payments launched in the fall of 2015 and expanded over 2016. We saw average order size increased from $123 to $140 on select merchants.

Expansion of our credit products reached over 350+ SMBs and over a dozen large enterprises, increasing PayPal Credit’s online retail presence and share of checkout.

We were finally able to offer flexible financing to customers looking to extend their purchasing power.

And through iterative design and testing, we were able to clear a few hurdles and demystify credit for our customers.

I reviewed this project as part of a portfolio refresh recently. A lot has changed in just 3 years, and all I see is opportunity for improvement. If I could revisit this project, I’d focus on:

• Improving entry channels with defined business logic to present a custom Easy Payments offer on the merchant page and embedded in the shopping cart.
• Allowing customers to sort/compare payment options by what matters to them most, whether it’s total payment amount, monthly amount, or term.
• Our initial presentation forced customers to make a variety of decisions at once. A progressive/modal presentation of the payment options instead of inline would remove some of the visual clutter and help them focus on one choice at a time.
• Re-hauling our messaging and content strategy; we tried to address regulatory and business constraints via content, but we overwhelmed the user with too much alarming and confusing terminology.