Chewy Buy Now Pay Later
Consumer-facingPartnering with PayPal to design a seamless Buy Now, Pay Later experience on Chewy, increasing average order value and PayPal adoption.
Overview
- Outcome
- ↑ PayPal adoption & average order value
- Duration
- April 2025 – August 2025, 16 weeks
- Team
- Product management, engineering, senior leadership, partner teams, design manager
- Role
- Lead designer
- Owned design, UX research, stakeholder alignment, senior leadership presentation, and handoff/build support across a 16-week cross-functional launch.
Background
Partnering with PayPal to design a seamless Buy Now, Pay Later experience on Chewy.
PayPal was already available as a payment method on Chewy and had the second-highest volume. We decided to partner with PayPal and their existing payment plans to enhance payment flexibility, drive awareness and adoption of Buy Now Pay Later, and reduce cart abandonment.
Researching competitors and best practices
To get started, I referenced competitor sites that offered payment plans, as well as sites that worked with PayPal for buy now pay later, for inspiration on how it could be configured. I also referenced Baymard guidelines for displaying payment plans.
Keys to success
From researching competitors and referencing best practices, three takeaways stood out.
Clear payment schedule, rates, fees, and credit impact
Make it easy to understand the price breakdown and comparison to the full price.
Proximity of payment plan to price
Don't be too pushy.
Clear CTAs at checkout
If navigating to PayPal, make it clear. If placing the order, make it clear.
Initial placements
Product details: especially important, since some customers look at the price breakdown to decide whether they'll add to cart.
Cart: needed to inform customers what the total payment plan would be.
Checkout: revisited payment plan details here.
Aligning with other payment methods
While auditing the current PayPal experience on Chewy, I found it deviated from other payment methods, making first-time customers connect their PayPal account off-platform before returning to place the order.
Design walkthrough
Reflection
Documentation is critical
With so many use cases, providing a clear overview was essential so developers could follow along.
Pivoting quickly
We had to pivot quickly due to technical constraints discovered further down the line.
Involve stakeholders early
Earlier stakeholder involvement would have surfaced those constraints sooner.
Looking forward
We launched the MVP and plan to continue A/B testing placement and thresholds.