Pay By Link

Background

Paying for a pet's medical care is a sensitive moment, yet the in-clinic payment experience limited privacy, flexibility, and payment options, creating stress for customers and friction for clinics.

How might we make the experience of paying for clinic visits easier, more flexible, and more private?

What we knew

• 50% of pets with more than one pet parent share responsibility for paying for that pet's products and services
• 8% of existing Pay By Link use cases were already being paid by a different pet parent than the one at the counter
• Anecdotal feedback consistently pointed to the importance of being able to split costs to afford care

Current Pay By Link experience

The existing flow was kiosk-based and not mobile-friendly, and only accepted credit card, not the full range of payment methods Chewy offers elsewhere.

Solution

A secure payment link that lets customers pay from their own device, using the same checkout payment methods available across Chewy, including Buy Now, Pay Later.

Why it matters: for customers, this meant easier, more private, and more flexible payment at a critical moment. For the business, it meant higher payment completion and less friction for clinics.

Scope: covers invoices for a completed visit and deposits for an upcoming surgery, whether the customer is paying in-clinic or after their visit.

Key design decisions

Decision 1: Collapsing and expanding invoice/estimate details

The goal was to provide transparency into care while staying focused on the business goal of collecting payment. I designed the deposit and total as scannable, always-visible information, with the full line-item breakdown available on demand, keeping cognitive load low while still offering transparency to anyone who wants it.

Decision 2: Deposit information design

This went through three rounds of iteration:

1. Iteration 1: Showed the deposit amount with a "Learn more" link. Testing showed how the deposit is calculated mattered less to customers than information like cancellation policy and where the money goes.
2. Iteration 2: Moved explanatory content into a tooltip. This hid information behind an extra click and was still visually heavy.
3. Iteration 3: Surfaced the cancellation policy directly in the flow and cut the rest, reducing visual noise while still communicating the information that actually mattered to customers.

Decision 3: Sharing payment links and receipts

Since half of multi-pet households share payment responsibility, I designed for that directly: clinicians can send the payment link to a different pet parent than the one in the room, and customers can share their receipt to an additional email after paying.

Outcomes

Pay By Link shipped as a secure, mobile-first payment flow spanning both consumer checkout and enterprise clinic tools, replacing a kiosk-only, card-only experience with one that matches the flexibility of Chewy's broader checkout, and reflects how pet parents actually split responsibility for care.