OLX Pay & Ship
In-app payment and delivery for buyers and sellers on OLX
Role
Senior Product Designer
Team
3 PMs, 2 researchers, a tech lead and engineers
Outcome
70%+ seller adoption · 26M+ transactions with delivery · C-SAT 9.2+ in the first year
Summary
Buyers and sellers on OLX arranged payment and delivery themselves, over chat and phone, and many deals fell apart. I designed the buyer and seller experience that brought both inside the marketplace, including the PayU payment integration, KYC and delivery providers.
Buying and selling on OLX often required buyers and sellers to arrange delivery and payment themselves — through chats and phone calls. This added friction, created uncertainty, and sometimes caused transactions to fall through. OLX Pay & Ship brought payment and delivery directly into the marketplace, helping buyers and sellers complete transactions in one place, with clearer steps and greater confidence. Within its first year, the experience reached over 70% seller adoption and more than 26 million transactions with delivery, with C-SAT exceeding 9.2.
What we discovered
• Buyers didn’t trust sending money before receiving the item.
• Sellers found delivery setup confusing and time-consuming.
• Conversations about shipping happened outside OLX, breaking the transaction flow.
These pain points shaped our key goal - to design a trusted and effortless transaction flow where both sides could complete the deal inside the platform.
Before Pay & Ship: buyers and sellers agreed on delivery, price and payment between themselves, mostly over chat and phone, and the deal often moved outside OLX.
Process overview
We ran multiple design sprints with PMs, engineers, and researchers, focusing on clarity and trust.
Every decision was grounded in user feedback.
For example, sellers struggled to estimate package sizes - so we simplified it into ready-made parcel options.
They also found payments confusing - so we visualized the process with short copy and friendly illustrations.
Small changes, but they made people feel safe and in control.
Research & Ideation
During early workshops, we explored multiple user journeys and visualized key “How might we…” questions.
The most critical insight: users cared less about delivery options and more about trust and clarity.
That finding became our design north star.
Prototyping & Testing
Simplifying parcel selection
Sellers struggled with manually entering parcel dimensions and weight, often finding it difficult to estimate the right values.
We explored different approaches and replaced manual inputs with four visual parcel presets, using familiar product examples to make the options easier to understand.
The result was a simpler way to select a package size before choosing a delivery method.
Design sprint with PMs, engineers and researchers, where I took part as the designer: mapping user journeys and turning pain points into “How might we…” questions.
Seller parcel setup in three iterations. v1 asked for exact dimensions and weight, which sellers struggled to estimate. v2 replaced them with four visual parcel presets. As we added more delivery providers, v3 kept the four sizes but tied each one directly to its providers and prices, so sellers could compare options consistently.
Buyer: “Buy with delivery” on the listing page, choosing a carrier, a pick-up point and payment, picking a parcel locker on the map, and the order confirmation with the next steps.
Seller: delivery size and PayU payout setup right in the posting form, then confirming the sale, choosing a drop-off point and seeing what happens next.
Designing for Compliance and Trust
Every seller who wanted to get paid through OLX had to pass a Know Your Customer check. It’s required by EU law, and it sits at the most sensitive moment of a sale: right after someone has found a buyer and is waiting for their money.
Our first payment provider, Adyen, used four verification tiers, and the highest one asked for a bank statement. Sellers dropped off there. In 2022 OLX moved payments to PayU, which belongs to the same Prosus group, and I redesigned the verification flow around the new provider’s rules: ask only for what’s needed at that moment, explain why before asking, and keep sellers moving when something goes wrong.
I was the Senior Product Designer on the PayU integration, turning all of the provider’s requirements into the seller experience on OLX, together with product manager Marta Kosmalska.
Verification grows with what a seller earns. Tier 0 happens while posting an ad, tier 1 at the first sale, and full verification only above 3 000 zł for one item or 30 000 zł in total.
Asking only for what’s needed
PayU’s rules let us split verification by how much a seller earns. Most private sellers only ever see tier 1: their bank account number and date of birth, asked once, inside the order confirmation flow they’re already in.
Moving from Adyen also removed the bank statement. PayU confirms the account holder with a 1 zł transfer instead, which sellers get back a few days later.
Tier 1 in three short steps. The reason for verification comes first, then personal details, a review with the PayU consent, and confirmation that payouts are set up.
Explaining before asking
Full verification asks for a lot: an ID photo, PESEL, an address and a bank transfer. Sellers who reached it often didn’t know why it was happening to them. So the flow opens with a screen that names the reason (the payout limit, or a problem with earlier details), lists what to have ready and says how long PayU takes to check.
Each step keeps a short “why we ask” card at the top. We agreed on placing it before the form on mobile, so the explanation is never below the fold.
Full verification in five steps. Limits are explained before anything is asked, documents are uploaded and reviewed, the 1 zł transfer confirms the account, and the seller knows verification can take up to 5 working days.
Designing for when it fails
Verification fails in ordinary ways: a blurry ID photo, a missing page, a timeout on the provider’s side. We decided that on an error the seller stays on the same screen with everything they entered kept, and sees what went wrong and what to do next.
Field errors appear inline, as soon as a value can’t be accepted, such as a date of birth under 18.
When PayU rejects a document, the seller sees which file and why, and uploads only that one again.
When sending fails, a banner offers a retry or a way to contact OLX, and the reviewed details stay on screen.
Three failure states: inline validation, a document rejected by PayU, and a failed submission that keeps the seller’s details.
Screens redrawn in the current OLX visual language for consistency. The flow, copy and states follow the version shipped with PayU in 2022.
Impact
Over 70% seller adoption within the first year
Over 26M transactions with delivery
C-SAT above 9.2
We introduced Pay & Ship gradually, validating the end-to-end experience internally before expanding its availability. Moving the opt-in into the posting flow later helped increase adoption while posting conversion remained stable.
Beyond numbers, the biggest success was behavioral - users stopped arranging shipping via chat and started trusting OLX to handle the full transaction.
What I learned
Trust is part of the experience, not a separate feature. Buyers and sellers needed clarity and confidence across the entire transaction, not just a secure payment step.
Complexity needs to be coordinated across the journey. Payment, delivery, verification and seller workflows had to work as one coherent experience.
Scaling design requires shared understanding. As more teams contributed, aligning on the end-to-end experience became as important as individual screen decisions.
More from the sprint: sketching the ad page, chat and delivery selection, and clustering “How might we…” ideas around choice and negotiation.
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