Timiza Mobile App
Kenya Digital Wallet proposition, later extended to the rest of Africa under the Absa Spark marque.
Background
Timiza is a Kenyan virtual banking solution offering customers instant micro-loans (30 days to pay), send money options, bill payments, airtime top-ups, insurance cover and savings accounts.
In 2017, while working in the Barclays Africa Design Office, colleagues from Barclays Kenya approached us requesting brand approval on a new digital wallet app they had commissioned and built by a local supplier. To put it bluntly, we were mortified by what we saw - not only was the branding completely misaligned, but the app's usability and production value/quality was appalling.
Following our feedback and a few more attempts, this time by a local ad agency, we realised that we had to step in and take control of the product’s design as we knew in its current state the product would be dead as soon as it hit the market.
My Contributions
Lead UI & UX Designer
I educated Kenya business on the value and process of good design, as well as guide the development team to accurately implement our concepts and ensure a quality implementation.
- Workshop with in-country colleagues (subject matter experts)
- Market research and competitor analysis
- Customer and staff interviews
- Prototyping
- UI Design and microcopy
- Testing
Screenshots of the "before" version of the app which we blocked from going to market.
The Kenya ad agency's attempt at improving the app, with my comments and scribbles.
My redesign of Barclays Timiza V1.0.
Approach
Given the +5000km distance between us in Cape Town and our colleagues and customers in Nairobi, the majority of the project had to be done remotely. We held frequent workshop with our colleagues to gain an understanding of the business objectives and market, validate our assumptions and to review and test prototypes. I was fortunate enough to travel to Kenya for a week during the testing phase and managed to speak to customers and experience a slice of daily transactional life, the Kenyan way.
Qualitative insights
- M-Pesa is the primary transactional channel in urban centres and accounts for almost half of the country’s GDP. The implication of this is naturally far-reaching. Many customers transfer much of their salaries out of bank accounts straight into M-Pesa. Wallet offerings need to be compelling to compete or complement M-Pesa. Micro-financing plays a critical role.
- Urbanites support their families in rural areas by sending money home. This is an important consideration as the wallet needs facilitate this and need to be designed with financial inclusion in mind.
- Cash is still king in rural areas - primary growth opportunity, though largely via USSD.
- Kenya has a robust population registry, enabling incumbent financial service providers easier market entry, as well as greatly improving customer onboarding and KYC. Typically only a cellphone number is needed to get a customer transacting.
- M-Pesa linked customer credit history is accessible through Safaricom (MNO), who has a 90% marketshare.
- Customers are sensitive to data costs and disk space on their mobile devices. Therefore the app need to be light and responsive, focussing on the core value proposition.
- Many white-collar customers use micro-loans to top up their M-Pesa wallets for it’s convenience rather than necessity. A common scenario might be a night out where activating an instant loan via a mobile phone and directly disbursing it to M-Pesa, they avoid having to log into internet banking and making transfers. These micro-loans are typically repaid the next days or within days.
- It is common for informal traders to rotate through a number of SIM cards and/or mobile phones through the course of a day as they hit their daily transaction limits on M-Pesa. This is a pain point the wallet could easily solve.
Strategy
Mobile Money landscape
Strengths
Weaknesses (Opportunities)
- P2P Payments
- Financial inclusion
- Ubiquity
- Cost to serve
- Data
- Wallet interoperability
- Over-emphasis on P2P
- Government solutions
- Enterprise solutions
- POS & online payments
Proposed MVP app based on MVP scope
Solution
With Timiza being a new entry into the market against stiff competition, it was important that the experience is as slick, seamless and easy to use as possible. I focussed on getting the customer onboarded and transacting in as few steps as possible. Critical to the success of the product would be to ensure qualifying customers were able to activate a loan instantly upon sign-up. The experience needed to be intuitive such that customers would feel familiar with the app even on first use. It needed to be obvious how to get a loan and move money in and out of the wallet, particularly connecting the wallet with M-Pesa.
I based the overarching design construct on existing mobile conventions with in-line navigation and orientation at the top in the titlebar, primary actions at the bottom of the screen within the natural thumb-reach zone. Each journey was associated with a particular task. I paid careful attention to element hierarchy on each screen and as a rule-of thumb, I made sure we only had one primary action on each screen.
In terms of design, I stuck closely with the Barclays digital brand guide. I illustrated the onboarding screens incorporating elements from the existing Barclays illustration library and kept any new elements in the same style and palette. I redesigned the Wallet from the ground up, starting essentially with a blank canvas.
Wireframing stage - a few key screens
The result
The Timiza launch was a huge success, gaining over 2 million customers within the first 3 months of launch. It currently serves +5 million customers making this the largest digital platform by active customers in the bank. The wallet design construct I devised serves as the basis for the wallet expansion into the rest of Africa.
Best Digital Wallet of the Year 2021
Global Retail Banking Innovation
My redesign of Barclays Timiza V1.0, a few key journeys
The rebrand and evolution
Following legislative changes in the UK banking sector, the Barclays exit from Africa and its separation from the Absa group kicked into high gear in 2019. This meant all Barclays branded properties across the continent had to be rebranded to Absa’s newly minted brand identity. The deadline for the rebrand was February 2020.
Timiza also had to receive the fresh coat of paint and we used the opportunity to make a few UI and UX improvements at the same time.
The roll-out of the a digital wallet proposition into the rest of Africa kicked off in late 2020, with Botswana, Mauritius and Zambia launching in mid-2021. Many new features have been introduced in 2021, including a robust goal savings solution, QR payments, payment request, linked bank accounts and bank cards.
My Absa rebrand redesign
