Understanding why providers bypassed Booksy Payments—and what was getting in their way.
Challenge
Booksy had a payment adoption problem.
Providers were enabling Booksy Payments and using it for deposits and cancellation fees—but many were still taking final payments through tools like Cash, Zelle, PayPal, and Square.
The question was why.
I led research to understand what was preventing established Booksy providers from using the platform for their everyday transactions and identify opportunities to increase adoption.
Approach
I interviewed four established Booksy providers across hair, lash, and nail businesses who had enabled Booksy Payments but weren't consistently using it for completed-service transactions.
All participants had used Booksy for at least three years, giving them extensive familiarity with the platform and its payment capabilities.
The interviews explored how providers collected payments, which alternatives they used, and what influenced their choice of payment method at the point of sale..
Insights & Impact
Speed outweighed convenience
Most participants used PayPal, Zelle, Cash, or Square to collect final payments because Booksy Payments could take 2–3 days to process. Participants consistently indicated that they would be more likely to use Booksy Payments if funds were available the same day or within 24 hours. When choosing a payment method, access to their earnings outweighed the convenience of keeping payments within Booksy.
Processing fees were difficult to understand
Participants described Booksy's processing fees as more complicated and difficult to understand than those associated with the alternate payment methods they were already using. This lack of clarity created another point of friction when deciding whether to complete transactions through Booksy.
Low usage limited awareness of Booksy’s features
Participants valued features available through the alternate payment methods they were already using, including:
Easy access to 1099 tax documents
The ability to save client payment information
Clear visibility into earnings over a specific time period
The ability to accept payments through QR codes
However, some comparable features were already available through Booksy. Because participants weren't regularly using Booksy to complete transactions, they were unaware of some of these existing capabilities.
This revealed that increasing adoption wasn't solely about adding new features—it was also about making providers more aware of the value Booksy already offered.
Impact: Increased adoption
Findings from the study gave the payments team clear opportunities to reduce friction in the payment experience. The team worked to shorten payment processing times, simplify how processing fees were communicated, and develop a physical POS terminal to better support providers' existing payment workflows.
Following improvements to the payment experience, adoption of Booksy Payments increased by 35%.
Looking Back
If I approached this problem today, one thing I'd do differently is broaden how we investigated the adoption problem. I would pair interviews with behavioral and product usage data to understand not only why providers chose other payment methods, but where and how often they moved outside the Booksy payment experience. That combination would give the team a stronger foundation for prioritizing opportunities and measuring whether changes addressed the behaviors we were trying to influence.
This project also reinforced that low adoption doesn't always indicate a feature gap. Some capabilities providers wanted already existed, while other barriers involved processing speed, fee clarity, and awareness. That experience shaped how I approach product problems today: understand the behavior first, then determine whether the opportunity is to build something new, improve what already exists, or make its value easier for customers to recognize.