🛍️ Situation: Expanding the Shop & Checkout Experience in LIORA #7
Description
🛍️ Situation: Expanding the Shop & Checkout Experience in LIORA
🌱 Background
LIORA is evolving from a wellness-focused application into a more complete experience that also includes physical products through the Shop page. The current app structure (Home, Start, Shop) works well, and the basic product flow is already in place.
At the moment, the Shop experience is intentionally simple and minimal, aligned with the learning-first and design-first nature of the project.
📦 Current State of the Shop
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Users can browse products from the Shop page
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On selecting a product, users provide basic delivery details:
- Full name
- Delivery address
- Phone number
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Orders are planned for home delivery
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There is no online payment system implemented yet
This simplicity has helped keep the project stable and easy to reason about.
🤔 The Situation We Are Facing
As the project grows, an important question naturally comes up:
Should we add an online payment system to LIORA?
This is not a confirmed feature or requirement yet—it is a genuine design and engineering dilemma we are currently thinking through.
🇮🇳 Why Online Payments (UPI) Make Sense
Since this project is being built in an Indian context, online payments—especially UPI—feel like a very natural fit:
- UPI is fast, familiar, and trusted by Indian users
- Payments can be completed in seconds
- Users don’t need to wait until delivery to pay
- The buying experience becomes smoother and more modern
- Many users already expect UPI as a default option
From a user-experience perspective, adding UPI could significantly improve convenience and confidence during purchases.
⚠️ The Problems & Risks
While online payments sound attractive, they introduce several serious challenges:
🔐 Security Concerns
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Payments immediately raise the bar for security
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Risks include:
- Payment data exposure
- Transaction failures
- Abuse or misuse of flows
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Once money is involved, mistakes become far more costly
🧱 Project Complexity
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Payment systems are not just UI components
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They require:
- Backend infrastructure
- Transaction states & order reconciliation
- Webhooks, callbacks, and error handling
- Logging and failure recovery
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This can quickly make the project much larger than originally intended
🧠 Learning vs Overload
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LIORA is still a learning-driven and design-driven project
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Adding payments too early could:
- Slow down core feature development
- Shift focus away from wellness and UX
- Increase long-term maintenance pressure
📜 Responsibility & Compliance
- Even basic payment flows come with legal and regulatory considerations
- This adds a layer of responsibility that must be handled carefully
🧩 The Core Question
How do we balance:
- ✅ A modern, India-friendly experience (UPI)
⚠️ Security, responsibility, and controlled project scope
without overwhelming the project too early?
🛠️ Current Thinking (Exploratory)
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Continue with home delivery and simple order flows for now
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Research UPI systems, SDKs, and real-world payment flows
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Design the Shop and order architecture so that:
- Payments can be added later
- Payment logic stays isolated
- Core features remain stable
This approach keeps future possibilities open without forcing complexity today.
🎯 Why This Matters
This situation is not about rejecting online payments.
It is about choosing the right time to introduce powerful features—especially those involving money, trust, and security—while the project is still growing and evolving.
This issue documents our current situation, concerns, and research direction regarding online payments and checkout expansion in LIORA.