Share the future. Together.
If you could have one thing to share, what it would be?
I'm sure there are many answers. It could be your toys, it could be your favorite food, or it could be your Spotify or Netflix account.
Have you ever thought that "future" also could be a possibility for sharing?
Before that...
Back in the 2nd half of 2020, the Kyash product team was in full swing working on our first phase of the transformation of "Japan's first challenger bank" (the product was called the “Balance Interest” feature), so the entire company was focused on the development of this release.
Finally, on December 1, 2020, we held a press conference to introduce the new service and our transformation to the market.
But, the drama came after the release. Because of some irresistible factors, the company leadership decided to terminate this project immediately, which means we can’t launch it.
"What the hell?” That was my first reaction (sorry about my language).
After figuring out the situation, I realized that not everything you want to challenge can be achieved in some cases. The innovation won't stop because of the limitations, we couldn't just sit in there and wait to die, so we started to look for another challenge.
This is the story before we start to build the "Share Account" feature.
Build that in 3 months
Now we have 3 months to build another future.
In the first product kickoff meeting of "Share Account", we focused on 2 points: cards and multiple accounts.
"Usually, cards are bound into one account, but if there have multiple accounts that could be bind to the same card, then the user would only need to bring 1 card. How cool it is?"
Mr. Ueda, the product manager shared this interesting idea in the meeting.
At that moment, my face was like:
In the past, the Debit Card and Credit Card were work to bind one bank account. And the concept that one card can switch between different accounts at the same time was really hard to understand and respond to when you just hear it.
This also come from other reason, actually, some internal interview shows user want to create multiple cards with accounts, but product team wants to build MVP fast as we can to prove this idea is valuable, also that is really hard to build in our system to allows the user to hold multiple cards and accounts to be done just in 3 months, this is why Mr. Ueda came out with this new idea.
After I calm down and looking at our system structure, I found that we can actually do that through our system, so that the card can become like a simple device, and can support different data to switch at the same time.
This is actually a new idea to change the way how you use the account.
During the few product meetings, our product team focused on understanding and organizing the product concept model. Since the concept was quite new and had to be understood by everyone, it would be a pity if the product team couldn’t simplify the concept to let users understand the structure and use it. So we spent a lot of time at this phase try to organize the concept.
We also did competitor research and user interviews to see if there are similar products in the market and how they work. We found that most of the bank or service uses the concept of "sub-account" for this kind of use case, which is a sub-account under the main account to handle the different usage, there still has some space we can break-in.
We set our target users are adults, aged around 25-35, who are starting to facing some life events like get married and have children in this stage, they need a product that can solve their needs (financial sharing and money educating for the children).
Gradually, the product concept was much clear at that moment.
Shape the line
After we see the concept was clear, the next important mission for us is how to apply such a complex model to the existing product and still make it easy to understand.
The design team thought of many different design solutions at this stage, but our main focus was on the relationship between the account/card so that users could quickly understand the concept and easily switch between accounts. We reorganized the information architecture of the original main screen and redefined the relationship between the account and the card in the existing product, put a lot of time into the micro-interaction to let users understand the relationship between the card and the account.
During the internal user testing phase, we demo for the first time switching between creating multi-accounts and link bind with the card. Thanks to the micro-interactions, the test results were positive in terms of account creation and card switching, which was a real confidence booster for our product team, we believe that user can understand the concept behind.
Another hand, on the marketing side, the design and the marketing team have also been in full swing discussing with the outsourcing production company on the commercial making. The three teams have exchanged many sparks based on our own positions and experiences from the marketing slogan to the storytelling.
Finally, we decided to use "The money and the future, share on Kyash together. (お金も、未来も、Kyashで共有しよう。)" as the marketing slogan for this new feature.
Go and beyond
On May 19, 2021 (late for 2 months in our plan), we officially launched the "Share Account" feature, which focuses on the function that allows friends/teams/lovers/couples to hold and pay for the financial account together.
The new feature satisfies the existing users and attracts couples who originally use the household expenses for financial management.
We got the results like this:
- Increase slightly in user growth
- Increases almost double in the number of account creation and deposits
- The amount/number of payments using a shared account is growing week by week. (It can be said a sign of problem-solution fit.)
Some feedback that they couldn’t find some of the old functions under the new interface (something we need to continue to fix, sorry), but most of the feedback are positive, the product development team finally can feel relieved, thank god.
We won't just stop in here, will continue to work hard every day for a better future, hoping to grow together with our users and share a better future.
P.S We are hiring designers! Come to join us to shape the future of money together.
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