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Case Study — TikTok PayLater

Designing Buy Now, Pay Later for the world's fastest-growing commerce platform

As the lead designer on TikTok PayLater, I drove the end-to-end product experience across Southeast Asia, the United States, Europe, and Latin America — a deeply complex financial product spanning three interconnected journeys: activation (KYC, onboarding, credit underwriting), payment (checkout, installment selection, disbursement), and post-purchase management (repayment, bill tracking, credit adjustments). I worked hand-in-hand with product and engineering to ship consumer financing at global scale, in partnership with Klarna, PayPal, Kredivo, and Atome.

Role Lead Designer
Company TikTok
Timeline 2024 — Present
Markets 10+ countries
Partners Klarna, PayPal, Kredivo, Atome
Overview

Scaling fintech from zero across four global regions

TikTok PayLater is a consumer BNPL product embedded within TikTok Shop, enabling users to split purchases into installments. Each market required navigating unique regulatory frameworks, lending models, and user behaviors — often starting from near-zero with no existing design guidelines to follow.

10+
Countries launched
82%
Peak activation completion rate
77%
Purchase success rate (US)
40%
Usage uplift via credit limit features
Global partnerships

Co-creating with industry leaders

Each market required close collaboration with lending partners to shape user experiences that balanced brand consistency, regulatory compliance, and local user expectations.

Klarna
PayPal
Kredivo
Atome
Market launches

Four regions, four unique challenges

Unlike working deeply on a single feature, I shaped full user journeys across multiple regions — each with its own complexities in regulations, lending models, and cultural norms around financial products.

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Southeast Asia

Thailand & Malaysia launch

Thailand launched as a white-label partnership with Kredivo. Malaysia was the first self-operated TikTok PayLater in SEA — a major step-change in complexity with no lending partner, requiring full ownership of the financial product experience.

White-label + Self-op On-site testing 0 → 1
82%
Activation rate (MY)
70%
Completion rate (TH)
$4.17M
Loans disbursed (MY Q4)
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United States

Klarna co-branded launch

Designed a fully in-app BNPL experience in close partnership with Klarna — from MVP targeting existing Klarna users to full release with new user acquisition, purchasing power visibility, and auto-pay.

Klarna partnership MVP → Full release Concept testing
77%
Purchase success rate
85%
Returning user PSR
30%
Traffic captured Q2
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Europe

Five-country European expansion

Extended the Klarna partnership into Europe across UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy — introducing flexible installment options including Pay in 30 and longer-term financing tailored to each market.

5 countries Pay in 30 Local testing
72%
PSR (UK)
$405K
UK GMV
🇲🇽 🇧🇷
Latin America

First self-operated model in LATAM

Designed the inaugural self-operated TikTok PayLater for Mexico, with Brazil to follow — navigating stricter regulatory requirements and conducting early concept testing with local users to validate directions before launch.

Self-operated Concept testing Localization
59%
Approval rate (MX)
100%
BNPL repayment rate
Key design challenges

Every market demanded a new design playbook

Regulations, lending models, and cultural conventions varied wildly from region to region. Each launch surfaced design problems I hadn't solved before — and required rethinking flows that worked everywhere else.

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SEA · Thailand, Malaysia
Regulatory variation across neighboring markets
SEA product design was intentionally aligned with close market competitors, but variations in local lenders and country-specific legal regulations required targeted adaptations to stay compliant without fragmenting the user experience.
01

Thailand — Reducing friction while collecting 6 months of payslips

P-Loan regulations required users to upload six separate payslip documents during onboarding — directly conflicting with the TTPL principle of minimizing input to preserve activation conversion.

Solution Designed a guided, chunked submission flow with visual progress and clear per-document requirements — meeting compliance while keeping the experience feeling simple and low-friction.

02

Thailand — Surfacing Bank of Thailand stamp duty fees transparently

Regulation required lenders to charge a 0.05% stamp duty on the total contract amount. I had to find the right touchpoints during repayment to disclose this fee without confusing users or cluttering the UI.

Solution Integrated the fee into the repayment summary with an inline breakdown, balancing backend calculation constraints with UX clarity so users could see their total payable at a glance.

03

Malaysia — Designing around the concept of "credit"

For SEA's first self-operated launch, legal guidance required minimizing use of the word "credit" in copy and UI — without compromising clarity or intuitiveness for users familiar with BNPL mental models.

Solution Preserved the established design while carefully reworking language and key UI elements (e.g. replacing "credit" with "limit") so users could still easily understand the product under Shariah-compliant constraints.

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United States · Klarna partnership
A fundamentally different credit model
The US market differs significantly from SEA in both credit models and installment payment structures. I had to design a new 0→1 product tailored to these requirements, while co-owning the experience with Klarna across separate product teams.
01

Designing with purchasing power instead of a visible credit limit

The US product uses a non-revolving model — purchasing power is assessed per transaction with no fixed credit balance. The experience needed to clearly communicate dynamic purchasing power while setting realistic user expectations.

Solution Designed a new activation and post-purchase UI that surfaces purchasing power contextually per order — shifting the mental model away from visible credit balances toward per-transaction eligibility.

02

Designing for order-based installment payment

Unlike SEA's consolidated monthly bill, US installments follow an order-based structure — each purchase has its own schedule and due dates. This required a fundamentally different approach to payment tracking, reminders, and post-purchase management.

Solution Rebuilt the end-to-end journey around order-level repayment — surfacing per-order details, helping users manage concurrent schedules, and redesigning reminders to match the US installment model.

03

Designing a seamless co-branded experience across owned pages

Different parts of the user journey were owned by separate teams at TikTok and Klarna — creating complexity across page ownership, transitions, and brand consistency. Users needed to always know which platform was collecting their information.

Solution Established shared design guidelines with Klarna's team and emphasized consistent navigation patterns — so users could move smoothly across pages without confusion or drop-off, always oriented to the platform they were on.

🇬🇧 🇩🇪 🇫🇷
Europe · Klarna partnership
Extending the framework for new financing options
While the EU product shares the Klarna co-branded foundation with the US, differences in user behavior and market expectations still required localized considerations — particularly around new payment plan types.
01

Introducing longer-term and deferred financing options

The EU launch needed to accommodate a new "Pay in 30" deferred plan alongside longer-term financing — without disrupting the established co-branded experience or creating confusion between plan types.

Solution Integrated the new plans as modular options within the existing payment framework — letting users clearly understand and select between plans while preserving consistency with the US co-branded design system.

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LATAM · Mexico, Brazil
Rebuilding billing and repayment from first principles
Adapting the existing SEA monthly billing experience for LATAM introduced a new set of complexities — the product had to support semi-monthly billing, predefined installment plans, and entirely new features like loan cancellation.
01

Mexico — Designing for semi-monthly billing

Mexico's shift from monthly to semi-monthly billing required users to make payments twice a month — a significant communication challenge. The design needed to clearly educate users on the new frequency while preserving existing monetary definitions.

Solution Reframed the billing experience around two clear payment dates (1st and 16th), with educational onboarding moments to set expectations and reduce confusion across the entire repayment journey.

02

Mexico — Early payment with predefined amount constraints

Users could only pay predefined amounts (amount due or total owed) — not custom values — which required clear communication of early payment discounts and fees without confusing users used to more flexible input.

Solution Designed a constrained payment selection UI with transparent fee breakdowns and early payment incentives surfaced clearly — setting expectations upfront and building trust in the repayment flow.

03

Brazil — Supporting both customized and predefined installments

Unlike Mexico, Brazil required a more flexible flow allowing both preset selections and manual payment input. Presenting early payment discounts and applicable fees clearly across both modes added real complexity.

Solution Built a hybrid payment flow with dynamic summaries that adapt to the selected mode — keeping the experience transparent and intuitive across both preset and custom payment paths.

04

Brazil — Designing the new 7-day Loan Cancellation feature

A completely new feature with no precedent in other markets. I had to identify clear entry points, guide users to select an alternative payment method after cancellation, and support edge cases like partially repaid loans and redirected payments.

Solution Designed a 0→1 cancellation flow with transparent communication of IOF tax, interest refunds, and recalculated payment summaries — so users could confidently cancel and re-route their orders without confusion.

Product across markets

How PayLater looks in each market

Each market has its own regulatory rules, partner integrations, and cultural nuances — which translate into meaningful differences in how the product looks and feels.

TikTok PayLater — Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia Thailand & Malaysia — Kredivo / self-operated
TikTok PayLater — United States
United States Klarna co-branded BNPL
TikTok PayLater — Europe
Europe 5-country Klarna expansion
TikTok PayLater — Latin America
Latin America Mexico — first self-operated LATAM launch
Design process

How I approached each market

Each launch followed a structured yet flexible process — adapting to the unique regulatory, cultural, and partner dynamics of every market while maintaining a scalable global design foundation.

01

Competitive analysis

Deep-dived into local BNPL players like Shopee PayLater, Klarna, Kueski, and Mercado Pago to understand market standards, mental models, and user expectations.

02

Concept testing

Conducted early concept validation and on-site local testing to gather user feedback before launch — ensuring designs aligned with local behaviors and language expectations.

03

Partner collaboration

Worked closely with partner product and design teams across multiple regions — both in-person and remotely — to shape co-branded experiences and align on feasible, locally relevant solutions.

04

Localized delivery

Adapted every touchpoint for regulatory compliance, lending model differences, and cultural nuance — from activation flows to repayment language and installment structures.

Feature spotlight

Beyond launches — driving growth through features

Alongside new market launches, I designed key features that directly improved product performance and user experience across existing markets.

Credit limit adjustment — SEA

Designed a dedicated journey to inform and delight users following a credit limit increase. The feature drove a 40% uplift in usage, improved the sufficient credit rate from 70% to 80%, and increased average GMV per user by 78% across Indonesia and the Philippines.

Auto-repayment — Malaysia

Designed a 0-to-1 auto-repayment feature that reduced manual repayment friction and improved reliability. Achieved strong early adoption with over 5,000 active agreements, establishing a foundation for the BNPL repayment experience.

Reflections

What designing a 0→1 consumer lending product taught me

Two years of designing financial products across cultures and regulatory frameworks reshaped how I think about design, trust, and global product work.

🎨

Design as alignment

In fast-moving environments, clear design visualization becomes a shared language that drives stakeholder consensus and moves projects forward with confidence.

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Market fit before novelty

Effective fintech design meets users where they are first. Competitive parity builds trust; innovation is then layered meaningfully to differentiate the product.

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Transparency as a feature

In lending and payments, transparency around fees and repayment isn't a constraint — it's a core design responsibility that earns lasting user trust.