Understanding what really drives choice at checkout.
By Anna Pantazi (Managing Director)
Every product, strategy and commercial team wants to build the payment solution that ‘wins the checkout’ - right? It doesn’t matter if it’s a new instalment product, a wallet integration, or an in-store payment experience – you want your solution to be the one that customers instinctively select because the value is clear and the experience is seamless.
But what makes customers pick one solution over another? Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Because customers don’t always choose what the business expects them to choose. To truly get inside the mind of a consumer you need to firstly understand the components that influence their choices:
- pricing, fees, and repayment options
- category expectations and competitive norms
- perceived safety, speed and affordability
- messaging and trust signals
- interface and checkout placement
- the situational context (basket size, urgency, device or buyer ‘mode’ e.g. on holiday, buying a gift, business purchase)
The use of ‘firstly’ and ‘components’ in that last sentence is very deliberate, because simply identifying the choice factors isn’t enough. Rather than stopping at this level of insight (as many teams do) you need to go deeper and discover how much each of these matter to the customer and how they may work together i.e. quantifying their real impact, the trade-offs customers make between them, and which combinations move customers to purchase.
Ultimately, that’s the holy grail; knowing how customers behave when all these factors collide at the same moment (the decision to choose one payment option over another), using that insight to inform your product, strategy and marketing decisions from the start, and being able to show merchants the impact your offering has on metrics like conversion rates, AOVs, abandonment rates.
This is where conjoint analysis fits in
Before I explain how conjoint analysis works in the payments space, imagine a shopper at checkout choosing between:
- a familiar debit card
- your new instalment product
- a credit card offering rewards
- a wallet with a strong trust signal
Each option has different fees, repayment terms, levels of clarity, and UI presentation. Which one will they pick? Well, conjoint analysis helps you answer this question by showing you exactly how customers process and make trade-offs like this. It reveals how much weight customers place on factors such as:
- transparency vs. convenience
- brand trust vs. price
- repayment term vs. monthly cost
- UX cues vs. financial incentives
- And many others
So, what is conjoint analysis?
Conjoint is a quantitative technique that recreates real-world choice scenarios. Instead of asking customers what they prefer, it observes which option they choose when presented with realistic combinations of features, fees, and messaging etc. In a payment's context, this means you can quantify the impact of:
- Which checkout features matter most (fees, repayment terms, rewards, availability)
- How much more attractive one product becomes when its configuration changes
- How trust, messaging, or interface cues shift behaviour
- How design choices affect adoption across customer segments
It is an incredibly effective method and when executed well, can be used to understand consumer behaviour in complex decision moments. In the context of a checkout for example, this insight could be used to help you influence conversion and abandonment rates, AOVs etc.
The benefits for product, marketing, strategy and commercial teams
- Build products rooted in real customer value
Example: You might learn that clarity of terms drives more adoption than low fees, meaning an investment in UX could outperform an investment in price reductions.
- Sharpen your GTM strategy by targeting the levers that matter most
Example: You may find that subtle trust cues outperform promotional messaging, helping you prioritise the messages that promote preferred behaviours.
- Understand how segments behave differently
Example: You may find that younger customers value flexibility while older customers prioritise predictability, enabling targeted design and communication.
- Avoid costly errors early in development
Example: You may discover that a feature assumed to be critical has minimal effect on choice, saving months of unnecessary build work.
- Simulate competitive scenarios
Example: You can see exactly how your payment product performs against rivals when all options compete side-by-side.
- 6. Quantify pricing dynamics without risking revenue
Example: You can test whether dropping a fee by £1 meaningfully shifts uptake, before you make a costly pricing change.
Ultimately, conjoint analysis can help you understand your customers at a deeper level, specifically the decisions they make and their reasons for doing so, so you can put your money and time into the elements of your offering that have biggest impact on customer choice and adoption.
Conjoint analysis in action
🛒 Optimising an instalment product at online checkout
The challenge: A major card issuer wanted to launch an instalment offer but lacked clarity on which features encouraged customers to choose instalments over debit, credit, or wallets.
What KAE did: Choice-based conjoint using realistic checkout screens to test trade-offs between repayment terms, monthly payments, fees, brand trust and UI cues.
What they learned:
- Identified the key drivers of instalment selection
- Quantified how transparency, interface design and fees affect uptake
- Simulated how different configurations shift preference
- Delivered a roadmap for product, positioning and checkout UX to maximise adoption
Understand customer choice and maximise adoption at checkout
If you’re responsible for developing a new payment product, refining an existing proposition or redesigning a checkout experience, one question will constantly at the back (or front!) of your mind: what do customers choose and why?
This is exactly where choice-based conjoint analysis, paired with deep payments and expertise, becomes your best friend - and it’s where KAE has been helping payment providers and banks for more than 30 years.
Since the earliest days of online commerce, we’ve been decoding the ‘moment of truth’ at checkout and payment method - quantifying how messaging, trust signals, interface design, pricing, terms, and competitive context shape customer choices.
Crucially, we don’t stop at analysis - we translate these insights into actionable product, marketing commercial, and go-to-market strategies that drive measurable adoption.
📞 So if you want to de-risk your decision-making, accelerate development, and/or understand the levers that genuinely move your customers, I’d love to talk. Book a call with me and we can explore how we can help you design solutions that win at the moment of truth.