Apple Financing
Building a checkout that supports multiple payment types without breaking trust
4X
Q1 Target GMV
2X
Transaction volume
15%
Increased traffic
Overview
In early 2021, PayBright was selected as Apple’s first financing partner in Canada. Their requirements pushed far beyond traditional BNPL. Some items were financeable, some weren’t, taxes always had to be paid upfront, and trade-in credits had to flow cleanly into the same checkout. All of this needed to launch for Apple’s September product release, giving us an eight month deadline.
I co-led the overall design and led the in-store experience. My role was to help shape a new payment architecture with Apple’s product team and PayBright engineering while keeping the user experience grounded and trustworthy.
Problem
Complex payments, high expectations
Apple’s checkout introduced a scenario that existing BNPL patterns couldn’t support, so we reframed them as opportunities:
How might we...
support purchases that include both financeable and non-financeable items?
create item-level financing?
show upfront payments of taxes clearly?
make trade-ins visible at the product level?
keep everything within one unified checkout?
The challenge was less about technical limitations and more about aligning with users’ mental models so the flow felt clear and trustworthy.
Research and Process
Understanding user expectations around complexity
We started by mapping Apple’s requirements across our existing product, surfacing every point where mental models would break.
We ran interviews and observational tests with people familiar and unfamiliar with BNPL. The biggest takeaway was that people struggled most when the complexity was hidden.
This insight pushed us toward a separation strategy. Instead of blending everything into one payment view, we broke the checkout into two distinct sections:
Pay Over Time
Pay Today
This allowed customers to examine each part independently. We worked closely with Apple’s team to rethink the information architecture , establish what information needed to appear first, and design a progression that made each decision feel grounded.
Solution
Structure over simplification
We introduced a clearer architecture that supported Apple’s requirements without overwhelming customers.
Individual financing plans surfaced side by side so users could see exactly what they were committing to
Trade-in credits applied transparently at the item level
Tax requirements communicated early to avoid surprises
Information hierarchy centered on reducing cognitive load and promoting confidence
The design borrowed familiar patterns where possible and added new structures only where necessary. The goal wasn’t to simplify the math, but to make the experience feel explainable at every step.
Final Experience
Impact
When clarity unlocked scale
The experience launched in August 2021 and drove more than 120M in financing within the first two months. Customers converted at strong rates and the clarity of the experience helped reduce servicing issues. The architecture we introduced became a foundation for future enterprise partnerships and set the stage for PayBright’s transition into Affirm Canada.
This project reinforced something I use in many of my designs today: complexity isn’t the problem. Confusion is.
