Client
ING
Role
Designer
Team
Mobile banking
Type
App feature
Generate a QR code in your banking app and send or scan the code to request money from friends, even if they use a different bank.
After some prototypes and discussions with the development team we concluded the QR code was the simplest and most flexible tool for the job. Pay your babysitter, request money back for the pizza you split with a friend, send allowance money to your kid, even pay rent to your landlord. It’s flexible and easy.
Payment request screen mock ups were made using extensive brand and style guides. Everything was designed for easy approval by the brand department.
Going Dutch
“Going Dutch” is a saying that means splitting the bill evenly and I can attest it is an accurate reference to Dutch culture. I’ve had friends ask me to pay them back for as little as €3.50. They keep track and it isn’t considered rude to ask to be paid back in a timely manner, just practical. It’s no wonder Dutch banks were some of the first to adopt direct deposit payments. In the US where we are still using third party payment services like Venmo and PayPal, the Netherlands has long been allowing people to send and request cash directly from their personal banking apps.
A rough customer journey sketch was all we needed to get started.
The whole project, from prototype to launch, was wrapped in 2 weeks.
This is one of the smoothest projects I’ve ever worked on. The in house design and development teams worked like a well oiled machine. They already had an award winning app. The brief came from research the design team was already familiar with. I simply churned out a but of concepts based on the known problems user’s had requesting money from their peers, prototyped some early ideas, did some scrappy usability testing with ING employees, ran the top two designs past the head designer and the development team for feasibility, and we moved forward with building a real version within the first week.
I started with lots of quick concept sketches. Sometimes it’s quicker for me to think through lots of ideas on paper.
The humble QR code
Early versions included using NFC to find people nearby, so if you were at a bar buying a round of beers you could easily request payment on the spot another idea would split up the bill for you so you don’t have to do the math. But ultimately we chose the simplest and lowest tech solution; the humble QR code.
The final flows for “payee” and “owner” show just how straightforward the concept with QR codes was. Quick to build and really easy to use.
The Dutch ad for the payment request feature is available on YouTube.
Mobiel bankieren App: Betaalverzoek via QR-code