Making Your Bank App the Go-To for Everyday Payments
Background
Can you get users to use their bank app even for everyday, small ticket payments instead of a third-party app or wallet?
Kotak Mahindra Bank wanted to increase usage of its mobile banking app for low-value, everyday transactions. Despite trust in the bank for large payments, users preferred faster third-party apps like Google Pay or PhonePe for daily spends. Kotak partnered with TinkerLabs to uncover behavioural barriers and identify product strategies to reposition their app as a go-to option for frequent, low-value transactions.
Approach
A 5-week research sprint with Kotak Mahindra Bank to explore why users avoided their banking app for everyday payments
- Conducted behavioural interviews, payment recall exercises, and contextual scenario tasks (like checking where different payment apps were placed on the phone screen)
- Analyzed app switching habits and decision-making in high vs. low-value transactions
Identified a set of irrationalities that were becoming perception barriers to using their core banking account for everyday payments
Key Strategic Lever
For perceived safety & surety, users wanted to keep their core banking account more serious, secure and distant from small, unorganised vendor payments. And so, resorted to a quick & easy, casual and friendly 3rd party app for daily transactions. This felt like a moat, assuring them of the safety of their core account. Although this was far from true.
Our task was to build some kind of a moat within the Kotak app itself.
Output
- Showcased our behavioural insights to the Kotak product design team who created a prepaid micro-wallet called Kotak Spendz linked to the main Kotak account
- Unlike other prepaid wallets that already existed in other banking apps, Spendz came with its own account number - with a separate account balance, a UPI ID & a tap-enabled card to use it seamlessly for all transactions & to track all your spends
- And best of all, it kept your “real money” out of view
SIMPLE IDEA 1
A separate account - only money that you add to this prepaid account is visible on opening the app. Only this money is accessible through the Tap-enabled Card, UPI, Autopay & other payment methods
SIMPLE IDEA 2
A 1% next-day cashback reward system on Spendz & allowing users to choose deals they can use, over & above the cashback
