Payments Integration & Optimization
Integrated Apple & Google Pay and redesigned Hilton’s wallet and checkout flows to improve speed, clarity, and flexibility across web and mobile.
Company
Hilton Corporation
Role
Lead Product/UX Designer
Platform(s)
Mobile App, Desktop
Year
2023
Project at a glance
This project focused on modernizing Hilton’s digital checkout experience by integrating digital wallets and optimizing the end-to-end checkout flow across platforms.
Problem
Checkout flows lacked support for modern payment expectations and introduced unnecessary friction, increasing cognitive load and creating drop-off risk during a critical moment in the guest journey.
Ownership & Approach
Led end-to-end design for digital wallet integration and checkout optimization across web and mobile
Designed and shipped Apple Pay and Google Pay within Hilton’s checkout experience
Audited existing checkout flows to identify friction points and opportunities for simplification
Partnered closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, and external partners to ensure feasibility, compliance, and brand alignment
Validated design decisions through iterative feedback and testing
Complexity
Integration of third-party payment platforms into a high-traffic checkout system
Balancing speed and simplicity with legal, security, and accessibility requirements
Coordinating changes across multiple teams and platforms without disrupting conversion
Maintaining consistency with other payment methods while introducing new interaction patterns
Impact
Enabled fast, familiar checkout options through digital wallet support
Reduced friction and cognitive load during checkout
Improved clarity and efficiency across the checkout experience
Strengthened the foundation for future payments enhancements
Apple Pay / GooglePay Integration
For demonstration, the prototype shows both Apple Pay and Google Pay options together. In production, only the relevant wallet displays based on device, browser, and OS detection.
Wallet Optimization
Overview
From 2023 to 2025, I led the design of multiple high-impact initiatives under Hilton’s customer-facing payments ecosystem. These projects modernized the company’s global checkout and wallet experiences across web and mobile platforms, supporting both everyday travelers and Hilton Honors members.
Key initiatives included:
Apple Pay & Google Pay Integration → Introduced native digital wallets to the checkout flow, reducing friction and increasing mobile conversion rates.
Wallet & Checkout Optimizations → Simplified address management, improved clarity around billing information, and enabled guests to easily manage multiple cards for personal or business use.
These features required deep collaboration with product teams, external vendors (Apple, Google, Adyen), and Hilton’s Core Payments Platform. The goal was to unify and modernize Hilton’s fragmented payments ecosystem—making checkouts faster, more flexible, and more secure while expanding wallet functionality.
This case study breaks down each initiative, including the problem, solution, outcomes, and my role across phases. Some features launched fully (e.g., Apple Pay / Google Pay), while others were completed but pending development prioritization (e.g., Wallet redesign).
Goals
Expand accepted payment types to increase accessibility and enable fast, secure checkouts across web and mobile.
Improve wallet flexibility for business and leisure travelers by enhancing usability, accuracy, and control over saved payment methods.
Reduce booking drop-offs caused by payment errors and confusing checkout flows.
My role & process
As Lead Product Designer, I led the UX strategy and delivery across Hilton’s web and mobile checkout experiences—streamlining digital wallets and guest payment management. I partnered closely with Apple, Google, and Hilton’s core payments teams, designing compliant, accessible flows that improved speed, clarity, and fraud prevention.
My Process:
Discovery – Audited analytics, gathered guest support feedback, and benchmarked competitors.
Prototyping – Mapped legacy flows, aligned with engineers on constraints, and tested iterations in Figma.
Delivery – Collaborated across product and engineering to finalize specs, support QA, and guide phased rollout.
Unlike most domain-focused leads, my role was intentionally cross-functional, touching every part of the guest payment journey—from storing cards and managing billing addresses to applying loyalty points and completing bookings with confidence.
✳️ Feature 1 : Apple Pay & Google Pay Integration
Problem
Hilton’s checkout flow created friction for guests without saved payment methods. These users had to manually enter card details, billing addresses, and other fields — a tedious process that often led to drop-offs. Despite growing expectations for fast, secure checkout options, Hilton didn’t yet support Apple Pay or Google Pay. Even Hilton Honors members lacked a one-tap payment alternative.
At the same time, the mobile experience was transitioning from M2 (legacy) to M3 (modern), bringing visual parity between iOS and Android and an opportunity to modernize the checkout experience.
The wireframes below show the original checkout flows on web and mobile (M2 and M3) before digital wallet integration.
The Solution
To enable seamless digital wallet checkout across Hilton’s ecosystem, I redesigned the payment flow for Apple Pay and Google Pay on both web and mobile platforms. I began by auditing the existing checkout experiences across M2, M3, and web, mapping technical dependencies with the Core Payments and Adyen teams. I reviewed Apple Pay and Google Pay platform guidelines, benchmarked competitors like Airbnb and Marriott, and partnered with Legal, Brand, and Accessibility to ensure full compliance and inclusivity.
Using these insights, I created unified flows that:
Integrated native Apple Pay and Google Pay buttons inline with saved payment methods
Applied platform-specific detection logic to automatically surface the correct wallet
Included fallback and error states for unsupported browsers or devices
Refined visual hierarchy and microcopy for clarity, trust, and consistency
Delivered two tailored experiences:
M2: Lightweight update for faster implementation
M3: A fully modernized, wallet-first layout aligned with Hilton’s new design system
For demonstration, the prototype below shows both Apple Pay and Google Pay options together. In production, only the relevant wallet displays based on device, browser, and OS detection.
Outcome
The digital wallet integration launched in mid-2024 through a phased rollout based on backend readiness (Adyen), franchise approval, regional compliance, and platform migration timelines.
Key outcomes:
Rolled out across 300+ eligible properties on web and mobile
Usability testing confirmed the flow was intuitive, fast, and trustworthy
Earned strong cross-team support from product, brand, and loyalty partners
Reduced checkout friction, contributing to improved booking conversion
Established a scalable framework for future wallet integrations (PayPal, Klarna, regional wallets)
✳️ Feature 2 : Wallet Redesign & Checkout Optimization
Problem
Hilton’s wallet and checkout experience lacked flexibility and clarity, creating friction for guests managing multiple cards and addresses.
In the profile, users could only save two addresses (home and work) with no option to add billing addresses or link them to specific cards. When adding a new card, no billing address or cardholder name was collected—limiting fraud prevention and causing confusion at checkout.
During checkout, the system automatically displayed the home address even if the card required a different billing address. When fraud checks were triggered, users often had to re-enter the correct billing address manually—a process that wasn’t clearly explained, leading to failed payments or extra verification steps.
Additionally, users couldn’t nickname cards, making it difficult to distinguish between similar ones (e.g., multiple AMEX cards ending in 1000/1001). Cards added at checkout also weren’t synced back to the user’s profile, creating inconsistent data between experiences.
The images below show the original Profile and Checkout wallet interfaces, highlighting limited address options, lack of card nicknames, and unclear billing address behavior.
The Solution
To address these issues, we redesigned the Wallet and Checkout experiences to give guests greater control, transparency, and accuracy when managing payment information.
The updated design introduced:
Card Nicknames for quick identification (e.g., “CJ’s Work Amex”)
A required Cardholder Name Field for fraud prevention and issuer compliance
Linkable Billing Addresses, allowing multiple addresses to be added and tied to specific cards
Clearer Address Logic, showing exactly which billing address is used at checkout
Smarter Checkout Behavior, enabling users to:
Select saved cards by nickname
Edit billing addresses per card directly in the flow
Add new cards or addresses without leaving checkout
Sync new cards automatically to their profile
The video walkthroughs below illustrate the redesigned experience. In the Profile, users can now add nicknames, cardholder names, and link billing addresses to specific cards. In the Checkout flow, users can clearly see which billing address applies to each card, switch between cards easily, and save new cards directly to their wallet.
Profile
Checkout
Outcome
Although this feature did not launch before my maternity leave, I finalized the end-to-end designs and delivered detailed specifications for engineering handoff. The work is currently pending prioritization by the broader product and engineering teams.
When implemented, this redesign will:
Improve Clarity & Control: Guests can clearly identify multiple cards, add nicknames, and link the correct billing address—eliminating ambiguity during checkout.
Strengthen Fraud Prevention: Required cardholder name and billing address inputs align with issuer verification, reducing failed or declined transactions.
Resolve Longstanding UX Gaps: Internal teams previously lacked clarity on how addresses functioned in checkout. The redesign closes this gap and establishes a single, coherent model for address logic.
Streamline Complex Use Cases: Simplifies multi-card management and supports scenarios like booking for others or toggling between personal and work cards.
Future-Proof the Platform: A modular wallet and address framework ensures scalability as Hilton’s payments platform continues to evolve.
Reflections & key learnings
Designing Hilton’s payments ecosystem challenged me to think holistically about how speed, clarity, and trust come together across multiple interconnected systems — from digital wallets to stored cards to loyalty redemptions.
Throughout these initiatives, I learned how to:
Design for trust: Small interface details — clear hierarchy, transparent pricing, and error handling — dramatically influence guest confidence in high-stakes moments like payment and checkout.
Simplify complexity: Unifying legacy systems (M2/M3, wallet logic, loyalty) required balancing technical constraints with intuitive, mobile-first design.
Build scalable foundations: Every feature was designed with extensibility in mind, ensuring Hilton could easily support future payment types and loyalty use cases.
Align cross-functionally: Collaborating with product, engineering, loyalty, and external partners like Apple and Google reinforced how essential early, consistent alignment is for success.
Champion accessibility and inclusivity: Working with accessibility consultants highlighted how frictionless payments also mean accessible, readable, and error-proof interactions.
Together, these experiences reinforced that a great payments experience is about more than processing transactions — it’s about delivering clarity, control, and confidence when it matters most.