Connected retail · Payments · UX
Guest checkout
Opening access to new customer groups
Why this mattered.
Requiring an account limited where the business could offer its service. Locations serving visitors and consultants, or located in shared spaces, needed a way for occasional customers to buy food or coffee without registering.
What I owned.
- UX & validation
I designed the customer journeys and led in-house usability testing.
- Partners & delivery
I explored solutions with external payment partners and coordinated engineering and business stakeholders, leading the initiative end to end.
- Rollout & learning
I planned the progressive rollout and tracked usage and customer feedback.
What made it challenging.
- UX
Coffee and fridge purchases required different payment sequences. Coffee has a known price before dispensing; a fridge purchase only has a final amount after someone unlocks the device and selects food.
- Technical implementation & future scalability
The experience had to work across connected hardware and external payment systems. We prototyped the solution with one payment method, while planning for additional options such as e-wallets in future iterations.
- Risk & rollout suitability
Purchases without a registered identity increased financial exposure: in cases of theft, there was little or no way to trace the guest user. Monitoring and assessing location suitability were therefore important rollout decisions.
What changed.
Unlocked new business opportunities
Guest checkout removed a barrier to winning new locations, helping the business close deals where purchasing without registration was important. Visitors, occasional customers and people who preferred not to create an account could now buy food or coffee.
At selected locations, guest accounts represented 50% of purchases. This demonstrates adoption of the guest option, rather than an increase in sales: most of these locations did not have a fridge before the rollout, so there was no comparable sales baseline.