Serve two distinct customer needs
Pay in 30 Days provides short-term flexibility;Ratenzahlung makes larger purchases manageable.
Turning Credit Caution Into Customer Adoption
Building Trust Through Responsible Credit
- My Role
- Led 0→1 design for PayPal’s German credit products, aligning cross-functional teams to simplify complex lending into trustworthy experiences—cutting the application from four pages to one and helping increase monthly TPV by 63.7%.
The need behind the trust equation
German customers wanted flexibility without debt: time to inspect before paying and control to spread larger costs. We weren’t designing more credit. We were designing trust—clarity before commitment, control after it.
The trust equation
The trust equation: trust equals flexibility, minus friction, plus transparency, plus control. Each variable is solved by the work described below.
Solving the equation, one variable at a time
“Why does flexibility require afour-page application?”
The Ratenzahlung application was rebuilt from four pages into one. Nothing about the product’s flexibility changed — only the cost of reaching it.
“What exactly am I agreeing to?”
The checkout was rebuilt so every payment option is visible up front, with cost estimates accurate enough to commit to — and the complete legal terms moved into the review step, where the decision actually happens.
“What if life happens?Can I get more time to pay?”
We added a snooze feature to Pay in 30 servicing, allowing users to extend their loan for a small fee. This gives users greater control while creating a new revenue stream for PayPal.
The outcome
Trust changedcustomer behavior.
Impact
Pay in 30 Days
Inspect the purchase first; pay within 30 days.
+48.78%
Monthly total purchase volume
+17.33%
Annual incremental revenue
- Partnered with Checkout to give customers upfront visibility into terms and control over their preferred bank account before starting the application.
- Enabled customers to reschedule upcoming payments for a small fee, increasing flexibility while creating a new revenue stream for PayPal.
PayPal Ratenzahlung
Divide larger costs into planned installments.
+14.92%
Monthly total purchase volume
+25.44%
Annual incremental revenue
- Expanded installment options, giving German customers greater control and flexibility.
- Partnering closely with the checkout team to integrate four PayPal Ratenzahlung options directly into the checkout page—and with Legal to present terms through embedded links—reduced friction, increased user engagement, and streamlined the loan application from four pages to one.
German customers did not adopt these products because we made credit more persuasive. They adopted them because we made it more transparent, controllable and compatible with responsible spending.
PrototypeBehind the Work
How the work ran: AI-assisted workflow, iteration history, and testing
An end-to-end AI-assisted workflow shaped the strategy and accelerated iteration: discovery structured with ChatGPT from meeting notes and research, early options generated in Figma Make against the PayPal UI library, and working prototypes built in Claude Code.
The iteration itself ran cross-functionally — checkout, product, engineering, legal, risk, compliance, and research — turning customer insight into two award-winning PayPal products.
Pay in 30 Days
- Iteration 2 — bank selection and add-bank moved inside checkout.
- Iteration 3 — streamlined checkout; legal disclosures moved to the review step.
- Iteration 4 — post-purchase rescheduling of an upcoming payment.
- Iteration 7 — new checkout framework: more options up front, more accurate estimates.
PayPal Ratenzahlung
- Iteration 2 — four installment terms added; checkout experiments.
- Iteration 3 — research-led rebuild on the new PayPal UI; the application went from four pages to one.
- Iteration 4 — latest checkout framework.
A working prototype of both products is linked above.
