Aquanow crypto checkout

Design clear states to guide customers through the crypto payment experience

Aquanow checkout on desktop, showing a partially paid invoice, payment history, and instructions to pay the remaining balance in Bitcoin.

The same checkout on a phone, with the invoice and Bitcoin payment instructions stacked vertically.

My role: Product designer leading the customer checkout experience
Timeline: August 2026 · 1 month
Design stack: Figma, Claude Code (prototyping)
Collaborators: 1 PM, 3 engineers, and 1 partner designer focused on merchant invoice creation

Problem

Imagine you’ve paid a $5,000 bill in crypto, but the checkout page hasn’t updated. What should you do?

Aquanow lets merchants accept crypto and receive the equivalent in traditional currency. But unclear payment updates left customers unsure whether their money had arrived. They contacted merchants for updates, creating frustration on both sides.

The original checkout showed a countdown and wallet instructions, but did not tell the customer whether their payment had arrived.

Project overview

Give customers clear payment updates so they can finish checkout without contacting the merchant

I helped review merchants’ support tickets to understand where customers got stuck, then focused the redesign on clearer payment updates and next steps for different payment scenarios.

I addressed usability issues and redesigned the customer checkout interface while a partner designer worked on merchant invoice creation.

User research

Customers lost confidence when they couldn’t tell what happened to their payment

I gathered insights from merchant interviews and reviewed incomplete payment journeys. Customers struggled to tell whether their payment had arrived or what to do when a session expired. That led me to focus on clearer updates and recovery.

Six stages of paying an invoice in crypto. Confidence drops during payment setup, after sending money, and when checking progress on a separate page.

Design focus

Two usability issues to address

Lack of payment visibility

Without timely payment updates, customers were unsure whether the checkout had received their money.

Poor error recovery

When a payment session expired, customers weren’t sure whether to wait, pay again, or contact the merchant.

Design intervention 1

Track payments without leaving checkout

Customers had to switch pages to check whether their payment had arrived. I brought invoice status, progress, and individual payment records into checkout so they could track everything in one place.

Before: customers navigated between the payment instructions and a separate page with payment status and history.

After: the checkout shows invoice status, amount paid and due, and individual payment records alongside the payment instructions.

Design intervention 2

Give customers a clear next step when their payment session expires

An expired exchange rate didn’t always mean a failed payment. I worked with engineers to design three recovery paths based on whether the system detected a full payment, a partial payment, or no payment.

A generic expiry message is replaced with three paths: wait for confirmation after full payment, accept a new rate if no payment was sent, or pay the repriced remaining balance after a partial payment.

Design intervention 3

Show customers what to expect after they send a payment

Customers kept refreshing checkout to see if their payment had arrived. I added a note explaining how long a payment might take to appear and showed when checkout last checked for new payments.

Two checkout updates: a timestamp showing the last automatic check and a message explaining that a payment may take up to five minutes to appear.

Outcome

Customers completed payments in 27% less time

Checkout analytics showed a 27% reduction in invoice payment completion time after launch compared with the previous flow. Related support tickets also decreased, indicating customers needed less help completing their payments.

Takeaways

Design for payment delays and recovery from the start

Reviewing the first release taught me to map these scenarios early and design around what customers need to know and do next when a payment is delayed, partially received, or interrupted by an expired rate.