Whole Bank — UX Design Thinking

The Ask:

Whole Bank envisions themselves as a progressive bank. They aim to become more embracing of technology and customer-focused experiences. One of their goals is to allow their customers to make payments using their already existing mobile application instead of their physical debit/credit cards. Their goal is to offer a different way to save and manage money by giving customers innovative options, including virtual currencies.

My task is to create a feature for this (already existing) application that allows the bank customers to pay for things using the mobile app. For the purpose of this exercise, it is to be assumed that all customer information is already included in app, and I will be ignoring security issues and other technical limitations.

The Design Thinking Process:

In order to better understand what are the main pain points of current banking users, I interviewed five travelers. The target audience was composed of 3 male and 2 female frequent travelers that are in the age bracket of 29–39 (“frequent traveler” is defined as having traveled to more than 15 countries, on at least 3 different continents).

The tone of the interview was centered around their international experiences, covering everything from how they prepare money for their trips to how they handle money abroad. Some of the questions included:

• How have you prepared (money-wise) for previous trips? What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining money from your bank or other sources?
• Around what percentage of places that you have visited accepted cash as the only form of payment? in which regions/cities?
• What has been your approach to pay at these locations when you did not have local currencies available on hand?
• Have you considered using PayPal abroad? If not, why not? (also similar questions relating to other competitors such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and other banking virtual card apps like the one for Chase)
• Have you considered using cryptocurrencies abroad? If not, why not?

Some insights gathered from the interviews included:

• Frequent travelers tend to be more cautious travelers; they prepare ahead of time by estimating how much cash they are going to need to have on hand and account for the exchange rates. However, they are still faced with having limited options for obtaining favorable exchange rates abroad.
• They take special precautions when traveling, such as carrying backup methods of payments (i.e. additional debit or credit cards).
• All 5 participants stated that about 70–80% of places accepted more than one method of payment. Surprisingly, based on their experiences more technologically developed cities like New York, San Francisco, Singapore and others are the ones that choose to exclusively handle cash as the only form of payment at certain merchants (probably due to the tax implications and to improve margins by reducing the fees imposed by major credit cards).
• The majority of the participants preferred to either pay with local currency or with their physical credit cards. The reasons listed for not using other competing options like Chase virtual card or Samsung Pay included security concerns, ease of setup of the virtual payment, and the lack of available POS that accept those payment methods abroad.
• In some specific regions like China and India other virtual payment options were primarily used by locals (like Wechat and Alipay payment platforms) but foreigners still primarily paid with either a foreign credit card or cash in the foreign currency.

Regarding cryptocurrencies:

• 2/5 participants responded they would never use cryptocurrency as a form of payment because they see it as a store of value and therefore preferred to think of them as more traditional investments like stocks.
• 3/5 participants would be open to using cryptocurrencies as a form of payment if more merchants were willing to accept them abroad.
• 2/5 participants admitted to not knowing enough regarding the management of digital wallets and as such were uncomfortable with using it as a form of payment.
• 3/5 participants felt that there was not enough of a monetary incentive to use cryptocurrency as the form of payment considering the volatility of the market and the unpredictability of the future value of cryptocurrencies.

The Solution:

For the purpose of this exercise, I chose to ideate some potential solutions by taking the design sprint approach of crazy 8s. The focus of the sprint was to visualize alternative payment methods that may reduce the number of transaction fees that frequent international travelers are often subjected to.

Based on the responses received, there are two features that the Whole Bank app could provide to customers to make their international travels more enjoyable.

1. Adding easy redirect interfaces to decentralized exchanges (both for FX and cryptocurrencies). This will allow consumers to get the best market rate for their exchanges with minimal or no fees.
2. Adding easy redirect interfaces to commonly used financial apps for the areas they are visiting it without requiring an additional sign up process, as the banking app would serve as a validator that all the necessary identity information was provided to expedite a transfer of money in that local currency with minimal or no fees.

Check out my prototype of the app: https://marvelapp.com/51i06ha

My hypothesis is that the frequent traveler customers would be more likely to use the mobile banking platform if the features provided would save them money and allow them to complete transactions with anyone in the world in a very fast and easy manner.

I plan to investigate further decentralized exchanges. Please share below any of the ones you may have enjoyed using.