Kristian Luoma: Designing the mobile wallet

Finland has long been a hotbed of mobile innovation. Can Pivo become an open platform for a mobile wallet?

Warning: liveblogging

Prone to error, typos and crimes against grammar. Post will be updated and corrected during the talk and over the 24 hours afterwards. 

Finland has a wealth of mobile talent and experience. And OP-Pohjola is Finland’s leading provider of financial services. How can they win the moment of transition with mobile payments?

They decided that the mobile wallet should be an open project that anyone could get involved with – so they went with another brand. But they had to communicate, and prove their case.

So – they used service design mixed with lean startups principles. And they started researching – what did retailers think? What did potential users think? They prototyped services, and discovered that videos were a powerful way of both prototyping and communicating their concepts.

Plastic cards are perceived as being easier and safer than the mobile wallet. So – why try to replace it? Why not enhance it? What other problem could they solve, instead? Well, customers worried most if they could afford something – so the balance became the number bone feature. Also, people are tired of all the loyalty cards they have to carry.

1. One Brand = Pivo

Yes, it means beer, but also to hold.

2. Light navigation

A very simple, Flipboard-inspired design to make it easy and “light” to use.

3. Simplfy

The balance is front and centre, and a hotspot gives access to the rest of the functions.

Three features:

  1. The balance: but also a graph of consumption patterns, and a simple warning if you’re above or below your average spend. There’s a warning to stop you hitting rock bottom before pay day, if that’s the trend.
  2. Realtime push notifications of purchase.
  3. Connecting purchases to retailers, with branding and business information right there when they needed

Three for the future:

  1. Expanded retailer information, including loyalty programmes
  2. Some form of payment, of course.
  3. They want to support other banks, too.

The feedback has been very positive – it pays to ask customers what they want first. 33% of their customers use them daily, and 66% weekly. Lean clearly works for a project like this.

Other learnings? Brainwashing your colleagues with videos is a great approach. The wallet will be a platform.