A Two-Second Story
Agency: Huge
Role: Motion Design Lead
Background
With the Fall 2025 release, customers can now pay in installments and using rewards for in-store purchases.
This feature allows customers who use Apple Pay for in-store purchases to access more payment options.
As part of this new capability, Apple is piloting and testing Point-of-Sale messaging in-stores.
Problem
Apple Pay had just rolled out pay-over-time and rewards for in-store purchases, a brand-new way to pay that basically nobody knew about yet. The challenge: how do you explain a new payment behavior to someone walking past a display, in the two seconds they actually look at it? And how do you do it while keeping Apple's design bar intact, on someone else's screens, for a feature whose UI wasn't even finished yet.
Approach
I led the motion design and helped shape the storyboards and overall flow. We explored two different directions, each taking a different swing at the same problem:
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General: keep it simple. Apple Pay logo, a QR code, done. For people who just need to know the option's there.
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Educational: actually show the Wallet screen animating through "Tap Pay Later" and choosing a plan, so the UI does the explaining for you.
All of it had to work for the format, vertical, glanceable, and readable from across the store. The tricky part: the feature was still pre-launch, so the Wallet UI changed on a new OS build mid-production, and I didn't have the updated assets. I ended up rebuilding the payment sheet and card screens from scratch to match the new UI exactly, and reworking a few layouts that broke once the new screens came in.
Down to the motion itself: the subtle bounce easing, the gradient shifts, the tiny micro-movements in the Wallet UI, I matched all of it to Apple's new OS frame for frame. It's the kind of detail a shopper will never consciously register, but it's the difference between "looks like Apple" and "is Apple," and anyone who knows the OS feels it instantly.
"General" Direction
"Educational" Direction, Klarna
"Educational" Direction, Affirm
Results
What started as a pilot ended up in every single Staples in the country. The concepts went the full distance, from first-round boards to a national in-store rollout across all domestic locations, meeting Apple's design standards along the way.