Until recently,  Latin American employees couldn’t choose which bank to use to receive their paychecks – employers decided for them. (This is similar to how U.S. employers choose 401k managers for their employees.) Banks like BBVA didn’t need to offer employees a compelling value proposition, as they acquired direct-deposit customers through employers. The core value proposition for employees was simply access to a wide ATM network and a credit card. When legislation gave customers choice over where to deposit paychecks, BBVA needed a compelling value proposition to attract consumers. 

I led the research and design effort to envision a customer-centric value proposition comprised of differentiated features and services. To ensure our success across Latin America, we knew it was critical to understand local business contexts, and to build alignment and buy-in with key BBVA stakeholders in individual countries. 

To this end, my team and I led workshops with dozens of key executive stakeholders in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Argentina to sharpen project objectives, understand local context, and build alignment. In addition to core customer acquisition and retention goals, we identified several other project goals that inspired some of our initial hypotheses.

Customer behavior data showed that many direct-deposit customers withdraw their entire paycheck in cash, shortly after pay day. I organized design workshops that included designers from different teams, to generate ideas on how we might encourage people to leave more money in the bank for longer periods of time. 

We hypothesized that ability to set aside money from each paycheck would help people to meet their goals, and would encourage them to leave more money in the bank. We created low-fidelity concepts to explore this hypothesis, (and others) in research. Several concepts involved partitioning paychecks – across spending/savings categories, time, people. You’ll see how this concept evolved into a core feature in our solution.

I identified a research firm with deep experience in Latin America, and directed their work. I worked closely with our researchers to define what we needed to learn from the research, and to craft appropriate activities and stimuli. Researchers led generative sessions with participants across Argentina, Columbia, Peru, Mexico. We need to gain insight into participant financial ecosystems, mental models, behaviors and needs around managing finances, saving, and career development.

We learned that people found it easier to organize and save money at home, than in the bank.

Through co-creation activities to get feedback on our hypotheses, we learned that partitioning paycheck by category would likely shift behavior and encourage people to leave money in the bank longer.

I led cross-functional workshops to synthesize research insights, and develop personas to inspire, guide, and socialize our designs.

Based on insights from research and feedback on concepts, we developed a high-level northstar vision for the direct-deposit experience. Here’s an example customer story for one employee persona we created to illustrate the vision and rationale.

Some of the key elements of the vision include:

New tools to support budgeting and saving 

Based on insights from our research, we envisioned new digital tools, like the ones in the above story: “pockets” for setting aside money for key expenses or specific goals, dashboard views, and investing tools.

New Services 

We proposed concierge services and deals through partnerships, payroll kiosks at employer offices, and designed improved enrollment services.

New Discounts and rewards

Based on research, we proposed that direct-deposit customers should receive discounts on core expenses (rather than luxury goods) when using their debit cards.

Based on customer value, business value, and feasibility of quick implementation in specific countries, we identified top features for detailed design.

For our prioritized features, we created wireframe prototypes and tested localized versions with customers. We iterated on interaction, feature labels, copy, and then applied visual design of our design system. We made further refinements to arrive at solutions which could be released in the short term.

Pockets launched in Mexico (as “Apartados”) on mobile and desktop. The flow below shows the (English version) first-time creation of a pocket:

Goals launched in Spain (as “Metas”) on mobile and desktop:

Calendar View of upcoming transactions launched in Spain on mobile and desktop.

BBVA now has a compelling value proposition for direct deposit customers – strongly rooted in features my team envisioned: Pockets (aka Apartados), Goals, Calendar View, discounts on core expenses, and a streamlined enrollment process.

The Pockets feature (aka Apartados) was immediately successful with hundreds of thousands of customers, resulting in $2.7 billion pesos being saved into pockets in just the first 6 months. Savings Pockets and other new features we envisioned have been integrated into BBVA’s mobile app experience, which is ranked by Forrester Research as the “world’s best banking app.”