Analysing the current state of the Qantas payment page — mapping customer problems, competitor benchmarks, and analytics to define a modular, omni-channel payment framework across web, mobile, and IoT touchpoints.
The payment step on Qantas takes a considerable amount of time and effort to complete. Increased cognitive load — caused by mandatory ancillary product options, overall page length, ancillary product incompatibility, inefficient payment detail entry, and a disjointed payment method experience — left customers frustrated at the most critical moment of the booking journey.
Customer feedback consistently surfaced confusion around payment options, high surcharges, and a lack of transparency in the pricing breakdown before committing to purchase.
"I don't understand what extras are being added — I just want to pay for my flight."
Qantas customer verbatim
The payment step existed as duplicated, coded instances across multiple booking flows — generating significant technical complexity every time a new feature needed to be rolled out or optimised. With commercial opportunities for payment expanding well beyond the initial booking (loyalty, ancillary, post-trip), the existing architecture couldn't scale.
The business needed a single, modular payment framework that could be embedded contextually across the entire Qantas customer travel journey — on any device, at any touchpoint.
"The high surcharges for credit card payments are making customers choose other airlines."
Qantas customer verbatim
Mapped the existing payment flow end-to-end, documenting every friction point, mandatory field, and ancillary product insertion. Created a current-state journey map covering 5 stages from booking page entry through to post-payment confirmation.
Synthesised customer verbatim, NPS feedback, and session analytics to build an empathy map identifying what customers think, feel, hear and say during the payment step — with a clear pain/gain breakdown driving prioritisation.
Analysed payment experiences across Singapore Airlines, Virgin Australia, Qatar Airways, Emirates, KLM, Lufthansa, and United against the Baymard Institute's payment form guidelines — identifying best-practice patterns and gaps in Qantas's current approach.
Defined a modular Payment Framework vision: a consistent, contextually embeddable payment experience supporting native mobile, embedded web, single-click purchasing, and server-side payment microservices — backed by a Qantas Figma Payment Library.
Each screen in the payment journey mapped out with annotated sticky notes — from flight selection and ancillary options through payment method entry, review, and post-purchase confirmation. The wireframe flow surfaced structural problems with the existing layout and became the foundation for the new modular framework.
Each screen and interaction in the existing payment flow was evaluated against Baymard Institute payment form guidelines and internal UX heuristics. Issues were colour-coded by severity and mapped to specific design opportunities — giving the team a prioritised, evidence-based brief for the redesign.
Clear placement of CTA (Pay Now) at the top of the page. Payment Widget at a fixed level and size on the page — consistent across devices. Inline error handling and immediate feedback at field level.
A dedicated payment page with a clean, focused layout. High level entry — streamlined flow with minimal distractions and a clear pricing summary visible throughout the payment step.
The security indicator is displayed beside the Smart Frame payment form. Dedicated confirmation page follows payment — builds trust and clearly communicates next steps to the customer post-booking.
Differences between Payment types (EFTB, FOP) handled clearly. Clear, inline error states. Uses 'Pay Now (AED)' button — explicit currency confirmation reduces customer uncertainty at the final click.
No checkout fees are advertised upfront — total price transparency from search through to payment. Customers see the final price inclusive of all surcharges early in the funnel, reducing friction at checkout.
A dedicated page focused on payment — no ancillary distractions at the payment step. Streamlined flow that respects the customer's time and reduces the cognitive load of completing the transaction.
A Payment Framework that enables Qantas to deliver a modular and fragmented — yet cohesive and consistent — payment experience for accepting and managing payments across all Qantas Digital touchpoints. The framework can consistently adapt to its requirements and personalise for each end-user, whether they're booking on a browser, a native app, a watch, or another IoT device.
Technically, the Framework extends the current single-entry journey to support 'One-click' purchasing — and by adding further fragments, enables greater payment management functionality across the entire customer travel journey.