Introduction

In my time as a product design manager at Affirm, one product that my team worked on that I’m particularly proud of is our Debit+ Card. In February of 2020, it was just an idea, and it launched to a beta group in September.

Business context

At the time, most customers saw Affirm as a service best used for larger purchases, rather than frequent transactions. As Affirm looked to grow their “share of wallet,” we wanted to build services that customers would use every day.

The product org in particular was looking to increase transactions per user, and lower the average order value per user: that would indicate that customers were using Affirm for more frequent, smaller purchases.

Affirm Debit Card

The company had been discussing the idea of an Affirm Card for years, and this seemed like a perfect time to explore it. A card that customers carried in their wallets could be top of mind and much easier to use for smaller transactions. A tiger team was put together to dig in, including a designer from the consumer product team, which I led.

Discovery and Design Sprint

But what customer problem would a debit card solve? The team got to work to push past the business needs and deeply understand the customer need.

In a design sprint, they talked to a group of Affirm customers and generated a few key insights:

• Affirm customers aren’t aware that they can use Affirm anywhere (rather than just at partner merchants)

• Debit card users use debit for everyday purchases and turn to credit or “Buy now, pay later” services like Affirm for larger ones

• Most customers use Affirm at the end of their shopping journey, adding extra steps to the purchase process

The team crafted a new, more customer-oriented, problem statement: near-prime debit users need an easy way to access credit for purchases that doesn’t require a lot of planning ahead of time.

From there, a concept emerged: when you make a purchase on the card, it shows up on a list in an app on your phone. On the fly, you can either keep it as a debit transaction, or split it into a 0% interest loan over two months.

Final designs

The designer worked closely with the researcher on the team to conduct multiple rounds of usability research, making improvements each time. His final designs included a sleek onboarding flow that allowed customers to pick their own card color, tying together the color selection with the Affirm brand promise of taking control of your finances.

The most challenging part of the design process was clearly and concisely explaining how the card worked and how to use it. Over time, I encouraged the designer to pull that information out of the onboarding flow and into the product experience itself, with the guidance of “show, not tell.”

Measuring success

When it launched, we were carefully monitoring how frequently cardholders were transacting and their average order value. Almost immediately, we saw strong improvements in both, including seeing a 3x improvement in the number of transactions per user as compared to a typical Affirm user. In addition, we saw a cohort emerge of super users who used the card multiple times per week.

As of 2023, Affirm continues to add 75,000 active cardholders per month, with overall usage up 37% year over year.

What I would do differently

More exploration time: help protect the team’s time and carve out room for explorations to create a shared vision of the future

More structure: give the team air cover with leadership to create structure around a roadmap and task prioritization. Even though this might slow things down in the beginning, it will speed up the overall product process.

Managing up: work to get more clarity up front from leadership: what is truly a requirement from above, as opposed to merely a suggestion?

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