You are the TPM for ShopSwift, a top-10 US e-commerce marketplace (~22M monthly active users, $4.5B annual GMV). Over the last two quarters, ShopSwift has invested heavily in a “1-tap checkout” flow on iOS and Android to reduce cart abandonment. The feature is already live to 60% of traffic and is scheduled to hit 100% before Black Friday (6 weeks away).
Two days ago, the CEO forwarded an email from a strategic partner: FlexPay, a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider that drives ~18% of ShopSwift’s checkout volume and disproportionately serves high-LTV users (repeat buyers, higher AOV). FlexPay’s head of partnerships reports that a subset of users are experiencing a silent failure during payment authorization in the new 1-tap flow. The failure doesn’t always show an error; instead, it returns users to the cart. FlexPay is threatening to pause co-marketing and deprioritize ShopSwift in their app placements unless you address it quickly.
Customer Support corroborates the issue: in the last 72 hours, refund requests and “can’t complete purchase” tickets from FlexPay users are up 35%. Data Science estimates the bug is impacting only 0.6–1.0% of total checkouts, but because it hits high-value users, the projected revenue impact is $1.2M–$1.8M per week if it persists through Black Friday. The engineering team believes the root cause is likely related to token refresh + SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) step-up handling in certain edge cases.
You are asked to lead an execution plan that reflects “going above and beyond for the user” while still operating like a disciplined launch owner: you must balance speed, safety, and stakeholder alignment.
| Constraint | Details |
|---|---|
| Timeline | 6 weeks until Black Friday; FlexPay expects an update in 48 hours |
| Team capacity | 6 mobile engineers (3 iOS, 3 Android), 2 backend engineers, 1 QA, 1 designer; no additional headcount approved |
| Release process | Mobile releases are weekly; emergency hotfix possible but requires exec approval and extra QA |
| Technical | Checkout is split across mobile clients + payments gateway; observability is partial (limited client-side tracing) |
| Regulatory | Must maintain SCA compliance and BNPL disclosure requirements; changes require compliance review (2 business days SLA) |
Produce the following as if you were walking an interview panel through your real plan:
A user-first mitigation strategy for the next 48 hours
A 6-week execution plan (critical path) to fully resolve the issue
A stakeholder alignment plan
A launch and rollback plan for the fix
Success criteria and metrics
Your answer should demonstrate how you go above and beyond for impacted users (especially high-value users who are failing silently) while still executing with strong roadmapping, trade-offs, risk management, and launch discipline.