What do couches, saunas, and custom engagement rings have in common? They're all being sold on Shopify, and most customers don’t want to pay full price up front. In this episode, I sit down with Diana Birsan, former Shopify PM turned founder of Downpay, the app enabling partial payments and flexible checkout experiences for high-ticket, made-to-order, and pre-order products. We dive into the psychology of deposits, how Downpay achieved $50M in GMV in its first year, and why BNPL might actually be hurting your store. With conversion rates improving up to 47% for some merchants, this isn’t just a payments tweak — it could be your next growth unlock. If you sell anything custom, expensive, or built-to-order on Shopify, this one’s for you.

Key Take-aways

Partial payments build trust and increase conversions, especially for high-ticket, made-to-order products.

Merchants using Downpay have seen up to a 47% increase in conversion rates.

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions like Klarna or Afterpay can cost merchants 6–10% of every sale and often aren’t ideal for custom or delayed delivery products.

Downpay integrates natively with Shopify’s checkout — no duplicate orders, no analytics mess.

Storing cards on file and setting custom charge triggers (on delivery, fulfillment, or X days later) gives merchants control.

Offering deposits can tap into buyer psychology, including the powerful “sunk cost fallacy” to reduce cancellations.

Downpay is especially effective for furniture, jewelry, saunas, motorcycles, and even events or workshops.

It can be installed and launched within minutes, with no disruption to your current checkout flow.

Omnisend - I personally use Omnisend for every Shopify store I manage! I’ve tried them all and Omnisend is hands down the easiest way to set up email and sms automations and campaigns, leverage segmentation to personalize them, and A/B test everything to optimize conversion. The push notifications and gamified email collection tools are just the icing on the cake 🤌

(plus most report paying about half the price of Klaviyo 🤫)

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Resources & Links Mentioned in the Show

Special Offer: Try Downpay with a 14-day free trial. Plans start at just $9.99/month with low transaction fees. Custom pricing available for merchants doing over $100K/month.