Emanuele Ceccherini
0→1 Pay in instalments
Satispay had never offered credit before. We built Pay in 3 from scratch —
a native BNPL letting users split any payment into three monthly instalments,
right inside the app they already use every day.
Why BNPL at Satispay
Satispay had no credit products before 2025. Adding Pay in 3 meant entering new territory for the app — and for its users. The design challenge was keeping it as simple and familiar as any other Satispay payment.
The OKRs
Two OKRs defined success: 2% of MACs using BNPL and 5% of C2B transactions over €30 going through Pay in 3. Both were at baseline when we launched. Design had a direct line to both — discoverability, plan clarity, and the right moments to prompt activation all move the needle.
Staged rollout
The product went live to 50k users in November 2025, then expanded in three waves to 800k+. Each wave gave us real usage data to refine the design before the next cohort arrived.
Where the design lives
BNPL touches the app in five places — covering the full journey from first discovery to tracking a plan months later.
Surface 01 BNPL Homepage
A cluttered single-scroll page became three focused tabs: Plans, Stores, How it works. Status labels (Active, Pending, Closed) got distinct visual treatments for instant scanning. A contextual budget warning was added to prevent unexpected rejections at checkout.
Surface 02 Plan Page
One question to answer: how much do I still owe, and when? A visual timeline replaced a flat list — each instalment colour-coded by status, with exact dates and amounts. A Documents section sits two taps away for users who want the detail.
Surface 03 Satispay Homepage
Dynamic eligibility tags surface Pay in 3 on merchant listings, right before the user taps pay. For users with an active plan, a persistent card shows the next due date at a glance.
Surface 04 Post-payment bottom sheet
After a payment over €30, eligible users see a BNPL banner in the confirmation sheet. Shown once, never repeated for the same transaction — the timing turns a natural moment into a discovery opportunity without feeling like a push.
Surface 05 Transaction Details
Two additions: a plan total line so users understand their balance movements, and a "Pay again" shortcut for repeat purchases with the same merchant.
Decisions that mattered
One long list mixing active plans with merchant shortcuts. Hard to scan, hard to act on.
Three tabs, three intents. Plan management, merchant discovery, and onboarding education each get their own space.
Someone checking their plan and someone browsing stores have nothing in common. One feed served neither well.
A unified status language
Seven plan states (Pending, Active, Completed, Overdue, Rejected, Cancelled, Suspended), one consistent visual language. Same colour, icon, and label wherever a plan appears — homepage, plan page, transaction detail.
Warn before, not during
A rejection at checkout is one of the worst moments in any payments product. We added a proactive warning when a user's available budget runs low — so they know before they tap pay, not after.
Where we landed
We shipped a working product in under a year and scaled it to 800k+ users. The metrics are still climbing — 1.46% of C2B over €30 (target: 5%), 0.22% of MACs (target: 2%). This is what 0→1 looks like.
What moved the numbers
The post-payment banner drove the biggest single uplift in activations. Homepage eligibility tags were second. Together they turned BNPL from something users had to find into something they encountered naturally.
What I took away
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01
Clarity is a product feature
When users are dealing with their own money, confusion isn't just bad UX — it erodes trust. I wrote every screen assuming it could be someone's first encounter with instalments.
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02
Staged rollout is a design tool
Each wave brought real signal. Things I was confident about at launch didn't survive contact with users. Fast iteration cycles between waves — not just after — made the difference.
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03
A shared language scales
Defining the status system before we had more than two screens meant every new surface inherited it for free. Building the vocabulary early saved weeks of reconciliation later.