Payment Method Discoverability - Amazon
Payment Method Discovery Across the Shopping Journey
Improving Payment Discoverability in Amazon MENA
Customers on Amazon MENA were unable to discover flexible payment options until the final checkout step — far too late to influence purchase decisions. Despite the Middle East and North Africa being one of the fastest-growing markets for BNPL and installment payments, these options were surfaced only after purchase intent had already been formed — or lost — without providing the affordability context users needed.
To address this, IESP (2026) was launched as a strategic initiative to redesign how payment methods — especially BNPL, installments, and bank-linked offers — are surfaced across key decision points such as Search, Product Detail Page (PDP), and Cart. The focus was not just on visibility, but on delivering contextual, personalized, and timely payment cues throughout the journey.
Across markets like the UAE, customers were abandoning high-value purchases not due to lack of affordability, but due to lack of awareness of flexible payment options.
IESP-2026 targets: 6% instalment penetration lift, $82.9M GMS uplift, 150K new-to-Amazon customers, with ACV of $75 (+2.1× vs baseline $35) — all driven by surfacing payment options earlier and more intelligently across the shopping journey.
— Project brief, Amazon MENA IESP Initiative · Dec 2025
Opportunity
The MENA region is a uniquely high-opportunity market for payment innovation. BNPL adoption in the UAE alone grew 65% year-on-year through 2023–24, with providers like Tabby and Tamara acquiring millions of users. Yet Amazon's payment discovery experience had not kept pace with this behavioural shift.
The data told a clear story: customers who encountered instalment options before checkout were 2.4× more likely to complete a purchase using them. The challenge wasn't building a better checkout — it was redesigning discoverability for the entire pre-checkout journey.
Five Customer Pain Points Driving the Initiative
Through session recordings, funnel analysis, and 22 in-depth user interviews across UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, five structural pain points emerged — each compounding the others and collectively suppressing instalment adoption across the platform.
Search Results: Hard-to-Discover Payment Benefits
The Search Results Page is where purchase intent begins — yet it provided zero payment signals. Users browsing Apple Watch, iPhone, or high-value electronics had no way to filter, identify, or anticipate which products had instalment options. Payment was invisible until the very end.
- No instalment signal on search result cards
- Eligible and ineligible products indistinguishable
- Price-sensitive shoppers had no filter anchor
- Customer prefers 0% interest & shorter tenures — but couldn't identify them
- Same payment experience for every customer profile
- Previously used payment methods not surfaced
- No logic-based ranking of payment offers
- High-ASP customers not identified and served differently
- BNPL at search level can increase click-through by 18–22%
- Monthly payment framing reduces price anchoring friction
- Installment filter chip unavailable — a known conversion driver
Discovery Project — Search Results: Hard-to-Discover Payment Benefits
PDP: Hard-to-Discover Payment Methods & Savings
The Product Detail Page is the highest-intent moment in the shopping journey — where customers make the final go/no-go decision. Yet the existing PDP offered no instalment visibility, limited bank discount surfacing, and no affordability framing. Three distinct pain points converged here.
Discovery Project — PDP: Hard-to-Discover Payment Methods & Savings
High Upsell Cart (HUC): No Visibility for Reachable Offers & Installments
The Add-to-Cart confirmation moment — the HUC (High Upsell Cart) — was another missed opportunity. After a user tapped "Add to Cart," the confirmation drawer contained zero payment signals, and no basket-building prompt to help customers reach offer thresholds.
Research showed this moment is high-receptivity: customers have just committed to a product and are briefly in a consideration mode before returning to browse. It's the ideal moment to surface a "spend AED 50 more to unlock 15% off with HSBC" or "eligible for 0% instalments with Tabby" message.
Discovery Project — High Upsell Cart (HUC): No Visibility for Reachable Offers & Installments
View Cart: Payment Methods & Installments Blindness
The View Cart page was the last upstream touchpoint before checkout — a high-intent moment with no payment context. Customers with a cart of AED xxx had no idea they could split it, no visibility of linked bank offers, and no incentive to add more items to unlock threshold-based benefits.
- No instalment offer or BNPL discoverability at cart level — despite this being the last decision point
- Basket-building logic absent: customers didn't know "add AED 50 to unlock Tabby instalments"
- Bank card offers (e.g., save AED 5 with Al Hilal) not surfaced until checkout — too late to influence the cart
- No combined view of savings across coupon, bank discount, and BNPL — each appeared in different UI zones
"I had no idea I could pay in four. I just saw the total and thought — that's a lot. If it said I could pay AED 237 today, I would have done it right there."
Discovery Project — View Cart: Payment Methods & Installments Blindness
Design Approach
IESP was not a simple "show more information" project. It required a new design logic — one that knew when to show payment options, which options to prioritise for each customer, and how to present them without disrupting the primary shopping intent.
We defined three design principles that governed every decision across the project.
From Pain Points to a Shipped, Multi-Touchpoint System
Six months of cross-functional design work, spanning Amazon MENA product, payments, legal, and three external BNPL partners.
Cross-functional kickoff with Amazon MENA Product, Payments, BNPL partners (Tabby, Tamara), bank partners (Al Hilal, HSBC, ENBD), and legal. Mapped the current-state experience across 14 touchpoints. Defined IESP success metrics and a shared design decision framework across all workstreams.
22 moderated user interviews across UAE, KSA, and Egypt. Combined with funnel analysis across 450K+ sessions to identify exact drop-off points. Eye-tracking studies on PDP confirmed that 80%+ of users never scroll below the Add to Cart button — validating our above-fold placement strategy.
Designed 3–4 layout variants per touchpoint — testing copy approaches (monthly framing vs partner branding), placement logic (inline vs overlay), and progressive disclosure depth. Rapid async reviews with all partners via Figma prototypes shared in weekly review cadences.
Worked with the SMX engineering team to define the ranking logic that powers personalised payment surfacing. Designed for the "Pinnacle Prime" ruleset: affordability PMs with lowest monthly payment → PMs with linked offers and savings → recently used PMs → CBCC onboarding. Defined 12 edge cases including ineligible products, cart thresholds, and failed authorisations.
Led multiple rounds of cross-functional reviews with partner teams including Tabby, Tamara, and bank stakeholders to ensure full compliance with legal and brand guidelines. Resolved key constraints related to logo usage, interest disclosures, eligibility messaging, and co-branding hierarchy. Established and maintained a centralized compliance tracker, driving closure of 140+ annotations and ensuring timely alignment for launch readiness.
Six-week A/B testing phase across three cohorts in UAE. Final handoff with annotated Figma specs, interaction documentation, and a component library extending the Amazon MENA design system. Shipped across Search, PDP, View Cart, and HUC simultaneously to ensure journey consistency. Full PXBR sign-off obtained prior to launch.
Search Results — IESP & SMX Combined Experience
Redesigned the Search Results experience to surface installment context directly on product cards, shifting BNPL and installment from a checkout-only feature to an early-stage decision driver. Integrated IESP with SMX's logic-based discovery to ensure the right payment signal is surfaced to the right customer at the right moment, improving relevance and conversion.
- Enhanced Payment Discovery & Promotion Integration — Consolidated installment amounts, coupon savings, and bank offers into a single, clear value proposition for eligible products
- "Installments Available" Filter — Enabled customers to quickly refine results based on BNPL eligibility, improving navigation for price-sensitive users
- Logic-Based Personalization — Leveraged Pinnacle Prime logic to dynamically surface the most relevant payment partner (e.g., Tabby for 0% intent, Emirates NBD for card-linked users)
- Discoverability & Ranking Impact — Improved visibility and ranking of eligible products based on quality of payment signals, driving higher engagement
Discovery Project — Search Results: IESP & SMX Combined Experience
PDP — IESP & SMX Combined CX
The PDP solution introduced a structured "Offers for you" row — a scannable, above-fold section surfacing the two most relevant payment offers per customer, with a "See all offers" link for deeper exploration. Crucially, combined savings (instalment + coupon + bank discount) were shown together for the first time.
Discovery Project — PDP: IESP & SMX Combined CX
View Cart — IESP & SMX Combined CX
The View Cart redesign transformed a passive summary screen into an active affordability tool. Customers now see a persistent basket-building prompt ("Add AED 50 to unlock instalments"), a linked bank offer row, and an instalment plan card — all before they reach checkout.
- Personalised payment suggestions based on cart value, customer profile, and behaviour history
- SMX ranking logic powers the primary offer shown
- Persistent instalment card showing total, monthly amount, and available partners
- Plan selector (4–12 months) accessible inline without leaving the cart
- "Add AED 50 to unlock 15% off with Al Hilal" — threshold prompt drives higher AOV
- Progress indicator shows how close the customer is to the next tier
Discovery Project — View Cart: IESP & SMX Combined CX
Measurable Outcomes Across the Payment Journey
Post-launch metrics were tracked over 30 days across 2.4M active users on Amazon MENA. Results exceeded targets across key KPIs, with the PDP "Offers for You" module driving the most significant impact on conversion and payment adoption.
Driving Higher Order Value & Re-engagement Through Payment Discovery
Payment Discovery improvements across PDP and Cart significantly influenced both purchase value and customer behavior. Affordability framing and basket-building prompts increased Average Order Value (AOV) to 2.1× the platform baseline, with customers engaging with the installment offer row adding 1.4 additional items on average before checkout.
At the same time, these improvements reduced repeat abandonment within the installment-eligible cohort. Customers who had previously dropped off from BNPL flows returned and completed purchases at a 3.1× higher rate, indicating that earlier drop-offs were driven by lack of visibility and trust, not just one-time friction.
