In 2021, Azerbaijani Kapital Bank relaunched its Birbank application, aiming to incorporate key digital trends in mobile banking for individuals. The result was a progressive product that provided an innovative digital experience for clients. However, local users were accustomed to handling tasks with cash, connecting products, and communicating with the bank in offline channels. Kapital Bank needed to motivate its clients to use digital tools more frequently.
To understand which practices would be useful, how to adapt them to the regional specificities, and how to systematically implement them, the product team turned to Markswebb. We suggested a new application development strategy.
The first changes led to a 30% increase in the number of transfers in the application.
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Introduce users to a new digital experience in the Birbank application, motivate them to use digital tools more frequently, and increase the number of transfers in the app. This involved conducting an initial audit of the Birbank application using the Mobile Banking Rank 2021 methodology adapted to the Azerbaijani market, formulating market specificities through interviews with bank employees, conducting usability testing with an augmented methodology to identify growth areas and best practices, and prioritizing practices for sequential implementation to improve user experience and form new customer habits.
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First, we identified the starting point: the level of user experience in the Birbank application at the beginning of the project. To do this, we conducted an audit of the application using the Mobile Banking Rank 2021 methodology, adapted to Azerbaijan's specificities.
Note! At Markswebb, we update the Mobile Banking Rank methodology annually! We can find international practices that will inspire ahead-of-the-curve solutions for the local market, as we did for the client in this project.
We formulated the market's specificities based on interviews with bank employees. We discovered which payment instruments and digital services were available to residents of the country, how transactions were made, and what specific features existed in the requisites and forms. We then conducted a cabinet survey and usability testing using an augmented methodology.
Testing helped us understand the areas of application growth, for which we selected the best practices of banks from other CIE countries. We prioritized the practices so that their implementation would help solve product tasks sequentially, improve user experience, and form new customer habits.
Kapital Bank's new application places a clear emphasis on daily banking tasks. While the bank already offered all available payment options in the country, clients were accustomed to paying in cash. The bank had to convince its clients that digital payments are more convenient, transparent, and secure than cash, and engage users in the service as much as possible.
The strategy we developed for the bank took into account the current level of development of the application. It consisted of three stages, from understandable must-have functions that could be quickly implemented in the mobile bank and yield results, to advanced improvements in platform convenience.
It is important to strengthen user awareness in the application interface by displaying more useful information through statuses, product descriptions, commission messages, and transaction history. These will strengthen the user's sense of control, and they will begin to use Birbank on an everyday basis.
One of the key improvements is the creation of a clear and functional payment history that meets the needs and expectations of clients. We proposed to move it to a separate menu section and display all online and offline operations, create a unified history of money movements across all products, and add a separate stream for templates and autopayments.
The ability to easily control, analyze, and forecast expenses motivates the client to pay more frequently through the application.
The second stage of development is focused on improving the convenience of payment instruments and product management. While quick transfer services are available in Azerbaijan, they are not yet widely used by customers. Transfers using bank account details and card numbers can be quite routine, requiring multiple steps to fill out forms with IBAN, payment purposes, recipient bank details, and so on.
There are ways to make transfers by bank details more convenient. For example, the process could start with selecting the recipient's details from templates or history, and include prompts, autocomplete, and input validation.
Simpler ways of making transfers will encourage the formation of new behavioral patterns.
This is about engaging users in the ecosystem and increasing additional sales. The key tool is onboarding, which informs customers about new features, helps them choose products, and reduces the frequency of support requests.
Onboarding should be contextual, unobtrusive, and based on the user's situation.
For example, in the Kapital Bank app, there is an option to pay fines for violating traffic rules, but most car owners continue to pay in cash. Onboarding can help users who periodically pay at gas stations to adopt this new feature.
The Kapital Bank team took the first step in the spring of 2022. They aimed to increase transactional activity, as well as connect new customers and increase the number of active users in the Birbank app.
We suggested the team to pay the most attention to p2p payments: notifications, improving the CJM, identification, and transaction transparency. Out of the 18 selected tasks, 6 are in the development stage, and 2 are already released.
As for onboarding, its development is already underway in parallel. Some of the recommendations have already been implemented, such as cross-search and the ability to order insurance policies.
The bank team considers the main success to be the growth in turnover of payments and transfers, with the volume of the latter increasing by a third.
The high ratings of the application on the App Store (4.9) and Google Play Store (4.7) platforms help Kapital Bank strengthen its reputation as a progressive digital bank in the Caspian region.
We thoroughly analyzed Markswebb's recommendations and distributed them among the product teams. Some of the suggested features were already in the backlog, and we simply increased their priority. I would also like to highlight the role of the Mobile Banking Rank 2021 annual report, released in December 2021, whose insights helped shape our 2022 backlog.
We focused most on p2p payment features: notifications, improving access to functions, identification, and transaction transparency, making it easier to track which bank the client was sending and receiving transfers from. Out of the 18 selected tasks, six are already in development, and two have been released. As for onboarding, its development is already underway in parallel.
Zakir Khanmammadov,
Kapital Bank
This case study demonstrates a strategic approach to introducing users to a new digital experience in the Birbank application. By partnering with Markswebb, Kapital Bank successfully increased the number of transfers and enhanced user engagement, positioning itself as a leader in the digital banking sector in Azerbaijan.
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