Timely adoption of innovations helps our clients maintain digital leadership, optimize and automate processes, attract new customers, and retain existing ones, enhancing their satisfaction and activity. Markswebb's role in this process is to identify and select proven solutions that contribute to business goals. Based on our project with a major bank, we explain how we developed a tool that integrates the latest global fintech trends, enabling users to quickly find what they need through an intuitive interface.
A client bank approached us with a request to benchmark its services against international peers and gain quick, easy access to the best solutions in order to:
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The bank turned to Markswebb to develop the project concept and address the task. Since 2018, we have been collecting best practices from global fintech and know where to look for trends and innovative solutions that can provide a competitive edge in the local market and ensure long-term success for our clients.
The trend database for the client was created based on over 3,000 international best practices from our Best Mobile Banking Apps Database and our knowledge of foreign markets. This allowed us to execute the project quickly and cost-effectively, with a strong understanding of different countries' market specifics.
We defined the scope of the research - 80 services from 23 countries with advanced financial digitalization, showcasing the diversity of emerging solutions.
Our watchlist included major traditional banks, established neobanks, fintech services, and companies where digital services are a key channel for customer interaction.
We sought best practices that contribute to:
The final selection included practices that the bank’s team can use to create unique opportunities in their digital services and expand their product portfolio.
To ensure the team always has the latest solutions at their fingertips, we update the data every three months and prepare a fresh version of the report in Notion with screenshots and screencasts of the practices.
The innovation and trend database enables the bank to actively shape the future of digital financial services in its local market. With each release of the updated version, the research team lead conducts a deep dive for all digital service teams and top management. During these sessions, we highlight the key development areas and show concrete examples of how specific trends are implemented in various digital services.
For example, the presentation we held in July was structured as follows:
We discussed six trends and new approaches to solving four blocks of user tasks. Participants saw 47 specific solutions from global fintech apps — about one-tenth of all the practices we found and provided to the team in the quarterly report.
This is an opportunity to navigate trends, ask questions about the research results, and quickly identify promising development directions:
The full result of the research project is a database of over 100 solutions in Notion. This allows product teams to quickly implement new features by reusing proven practices and improving existing scenarios with fresh and innovative ideas.
By the way, you can test a similar tool for free - Markswebb's Banking growth features navigator, a special database in Notion to help you find the right option. This navigator focuses on specific aspects of banking services, such as transactional activity, and provides a detailed breakdown of how different banks implement these features.
Task blocks in which the trends are sorted in the database:
Each trend includes several practices from different banks. Each practice has its own card, featuring the client journey with screenshots and screencasts and a detailed description of mechanics and business benefits.
This gives product teams the ability to evaluate the usefulness of practices for their own tasks, add them to the backlog, and quickly implement them.
An up-to-date trend database for specific teams:
Here are some examples of practices included in the database and presentation:
EVO Banco (Spain) uses voice confirmation as an alternative to Push and SMS. To confirm operations, the user must pronounce a phrase set by the bank. This reduces SMS costs and prevents fraudsters from intercepting codes.
Monobank (Ukraine) boosts transactional activity by transferring traditional offline scenarios, such as bill payments in restaurants and cafes, into the app.
Papara (Turkey) launched the world's first voice card for visually impaired users to enhance inclusivity. Each time a payment is made, the customer hears the transaction amount from their smartphone, helping avoid fraud.
YAP (UAE) encourages customers to use the app more frequently by offering customization. The more outgoing transfers and incoming card deposits, the more unique "skins" and new designs are available to the user.
Click (Uzbekistan) reimagines standard operations, providing users with a unique experience that makes it stand out. All transfers and fund requests are combined into separate stories of interactions between individual users. When transferring funds, users can mark them as a "loan," with subsequent return reminders.
Overall, we studied 100+ scenarios, 3,500+ solutions, and selected around 100 best practices
Creating a trend and best practice database is a familiar and well-understood task for Markswebb. We continually research new services, update our Mobile Banking Apps Database, and sharpen our insights through individual client projects. In this project, the search for trends was conducted differently across countries:
Data collection focused on three areas that have significant business impact and development potential:
To identify trends among the vast array of new features and practices, we formulated hypotheses and signals.
We relied on data from the Mobile Banking Apps Database and information from open international sources — Telegram channels, banking associations, media, online forums, app store announcements, and official websites of banks and fintech companies.
Afterward, we developed a universal set of client tasks to test hypotheses, conducted detailed trend examinations, and defined important research blocks. All practices that passed our multi-step selection process and shaped trends in the necessary directions were compiled into the final database.
Not visionary thinking, but real business impact: Markswebb's approach connects trend discovery with business goals
Exploring markets beyond the familiar one, where financial services typically compete for customers and their activity, including through digital customer experience, opens up qualitatively new opportunities for business. Any digital service team aiming to provide the best experience for its users seeks to enhance its awareness and find new breakthrough solutions to its challenges, but the most valuable insights rarely lie on the surface.
Collaboration with Markswebb increases the efficiency and effectiveness of this search:
Contact us in any way convenient to discuss how Markswebb’s expertise can benefit your digital service.
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Every year we conduct up to 15 studies of digital services. These are industry benchmarks that reflect the state of the market and trends.
