Checkout · Conversion

Accelerating Guest Users through Checkout

Providing Our Guest Customers with a Seamless Way to Pay.

Role
Product Manager, Purchase team
Partner
Stripe
Brands
Urban Outfitters, Free People, Anthropologie, Terrain
15%
Conversion Uplift for Returning Users
35%
of All Credit Card Purchases
>$300M
Annual Demand

01Project Overview

Stripe Link for Cards Integration - A checkout acceleration initiative to reduce friction and improve conversion rates for URBN’s guest and returning customers by enabling one-click payment experiences through Stripe’s Link for Cards product.

02The Opportunity

Our customers - particularly guest customers - face significant friction at checkout when paying with cards. They need to manually enter their 16-digit card number, 3-digit CVC, and expiration date for every purchase. This creates unnecessary barriers to conversion.

03Key Data Points

Existing Link Customers

14% of URBN Customers already use Link across other merchants.

Conversion Uplift

Stripe's data shows Link drives a 19.3% conversion uplift for returning users at merchants with repeat purchase patterns similar to URBN's.

Saved Payments

A significant portion of URBN's logged-in customers make multiple purchases per year using the same card, making them ideal candidates for saved payment methods. By enabling Link for Cards, returning customers can authenticate via a simple OTP and select saved payment methods from their Link wallet instead of re-entering card details manually each time.

04My Role

As the Product Manager for the Purchase team, I owned the end-to-end delivery of this initiative:

  • Product strategy & requirements definition: Wrote the PRD defining the problem space, success metrics, and functional requirements for different customer segments
  • Stakeholder alignment: Coordinated across engineering teams, brand teams (UO, FP, Anthropologie, Terrain), and our external partner Stripe to ensure alignment on implementation approach
  • A/B test design & analysis: Defined test cohorts, success metrics, and analysis framework to measure checkout CVR impact across login status, device type, and acquisition channel
  • Technical coordination: Worked with engineering on implementation details including OTP flows, Link authentication states, and payment method display logic
  • Issue management: Tracked and prioritized bugs including billing address issues and unintended Link display on internal CC websites
  • Data analysis: Wrote SQL queries to analyze customer payment behavior and identify opportunity size for repeat purchasers using the same card

05The Product

Stripe Link for Cards serves as a checkout accelerator that autofills payment information for customers who have previously saved their cards to Link.

How it works

  1. Customers who aren’t signed into Link have their email automatically passed into the authentication field
  2. An OTP is triggered and sent to their email or phone
  3. Once authenticated, customers can access saved payment methods from their Link wallet
  4. Authenticated customers can complete checkout with one click instead of manually entering card details
Link authentication at checkout
Saved payment methods in the Link wallet

Implementation approach

We ran this as an A/B test to measure impact on checkout conversion rates across multiple dimensions:

  • Login status (Guest vs. Authorized customers)
  • Device type (Mobile vs. Desktop)
  • Channel (Direct, Paid, Social, etc.)

The control group maintained the existing card entry experience, while the variant group saw the Link for Cards option in the payment element.

Link checkout flow

06Results

  • Created a seamless checkout experience for our Guest Users with Link Accounts allowing them to easily access saved payment methods
  • >300K sign-ups for Link via URBN Sites
  • >$300M in annual demand coming from Link helping spur growth for the Link ecosystem, for merchants, and for customers
  • 15% in conversion uplift from returning users
  • Minimal fraud uptick (measured via Refunds and Chargebacks)