Split your purchases

3 minutes · Klarna · 2021 · Product designer

Overview

We built a toolkit to make daily spending more flexible, organized, and social for Klarna card holders. The feature allows users to create "clubs" for specific purposes like trip planning, shared groceries, or group gifts. Club members can add transactions and split costs among participants.

Challenges we faced

When I joined the project, several obstacles existed:

- Incomplete team composition with missing roles
- Vague product goals and unclear objectives
- Limited engineering resources (only half the expected team)
- Pressure from leadership to show progress quickly
- Feature restricted to Klarna card holders only
- Diverse customer base requiring broad solutions

Our approach

After onboarding, I reorganized workflows and priorities with the engineering team (together with the PM). Key decisions included:

- Prioritizing functional core features over visual polish
- Focusing on basic UX while planning future improvements
- Creating a product vision and roadmap after our PM joined
- Targeting specific card user segments shown valuable in research
- Managing monthly stakeholder reviews despite limited visible progress

Editing splits and automations

Key solutions implemented

Club creation and management:
- Streamlined onboarding for card holders
- Developed invitation system across messaging platforms
- Handled three invitee types (card users, non-card users, new users)

Transaction splitting:
- Intuitive interface for adding and dividing expenses
- Clear visualization of shared costs
- Flexible organization options

User experience:
- Simplified workflows despite backend complexity
- Gradual feature rollout based on engineering capacity
- Continuous user testing and iteration

Payment flow or a split purchase

Unexpected outcomes

Before the team was reassigned in December 2021, we observed interesting usage patterns:

- Some users created solo clubs to organize personal transactions
- Common club names included "groceries", "Amazon", and "subscriptions"
- The feature showed promise despite being incomplete

Lesson learned

This project reinforced several important principles

- Functional core beats visual polish when resources are limited
- Clear product vision helps navigate leadership pressure
- Targeting specific user segments can drive initial adoption
- Even incomplete features can reveal valuable usage patterns
- Team morale requires protection during challenging periods