Leading the design vision at Lia, I restructured the checkout experience to support the brand's strategic transition to the digital education market.
The result was a balance between aggressive conversion and credit security, processing over R$ 24 million in GMV.
About Lia
Lia is a Brazilian fintech specializing in payments for the digital education market. The platform connects infoproducers and digital schools to their students, offering payment methods that increase conversion, with installment boleto and Pix, guaranteed receivables anticipation, and humanized collections.
Context
The digital education and creator economy market in Brazil is significant: 20 million active creators, within a global ecosystem worth over $100 billion a year.
Before entering this market, Lia operated in the K12 segment, basic education. The strategic pivot brought a new niche, new partners, and new purchasing behaviors. The product needed to be rethought from scratch.
The Problem
An installment payment checkout involves three parties with different interests.
The student wants a simple, accessible buying experience with no friction. The partner, whether an infoproducer or a digital school, wants to sell more and get paid fast. Lia assumes the default risk and needs enough information to operate safely.
Designing for this triangle meant resolving a real tension: simplify the purchase experience as much as possible without giving up the validations that protect the business.
Objective
Creating a payment solution that meets the real needs of students, partners and Lia.
My Role
I was responsible for the checkout design end to end, from flow architecture to the final interface, including the UI components that would support the product.
I worked across three fronts: flow mapping and journey architecture, component adaptation and styling, and checkout interface design.
Research
Before moving to the solution, we validated hypotheses with students through a quantitative survey. A few findings stood out.
Most students have no fixed income or earn up to R$ 2,900 per month, reinforcing that installments were a matter of accessibility, not just convenience. Over 55% wanted to specialize or change careers, signaling high intent and willingness to invest. And nearly 63% had never used any form of financing before, which meant the experience had to be especially clear and free of financial jargon.
Flow Architecture
The checkout was structured around two distinct paths, each with its own validation logic.
The direct purchase path, via credit card, boleto, or Pix, follows four steps: personal data, payment method, payment, and confirmation. It is the shorter path, with a single fraud prevention check at the start.
The financing path, via installment boleto or Pix, has a slightly longer journey: personal data, financing preferences, fraud prevention, identity, phone, and email validations, first installment payment, and confirmation. This path asks more of the student because it carries more risk for Lia and a greater financial commitment.
Separating the two paths clearly was a deliberate decision. There was no reason to create a single journey that burdened every user with steps that only apply to some.
Components and Identity
To support the checkout with consistency and speed, we styled Shadcn with Lia's visual identity, which I also created as part of this project. Buttons, inputs, tabs, toggles, chips, tags, sliders, menus, and tables were all adapted to reflect the new brand, with a color palette structured around tokens and a clear usage hierarchy.
Accessibility was treated as a non-negotiable criterion from the start. The primary colors meet WCAG 4.8:1 (AA) and 12.63:1 (AAA), with APCA scores of 72 and 98 respectively.
The Checkout
The interface was designed to be simple and trustworthy, the two most important qualities for a financial product used by people who, for the most part, had never gone through a financing process before.
The purchase is divided into clear steps to make it easier to complete and reduce drop-off. The payment method is presented directly, with emphasis on installment boleto, the platform's key differentiator. Installments are chosen with full transparency: amount, interest rate, and due date visible before confirmation.