Mobile Banking App for Migrants

Target audience

The app’s target audience is people who have recently immigrated to the United States, have a job, and regularly send money to their families.

Each year, more than 1 million people come to America to earn a living and financially support their families who remain in their home country. As customers of U.S. banks, these people have special needs and problems. Yet they are not potential bank customers due to the missing or low credit scores.

Until recently, there was no specific banking product that could address and meet the immigrants’ needs. The app we’ve developed is intended to support this sizeable but vulnerable section of society.

Solution overview

After downloading the app, users need to sign up and go through the KYC process, which is rolled out through the Alloy system. For this, they provide their social security number, personal details like first and last name and date of birth, phone number, and address. After the identity is verified through the third-party service Vouched, the user receives a confirmation SMS and sets a password. By that moment, a personal virtual card is created so the user can use it immediately. The physical card, issued by a banking partner, is delivered to the user’s physical address within a few business days.

Main features

Together with our client, we held some ideation sessions to create a user persona and define the user journey, and another session was dedicated to design thinking. This helped us to better understand the user’s needs, motivations, and pain points. Eventually, we came up with a clear vision of the features that would best meet the users’ needs.

• Money transfer

Transactions available in the app can be divided into two parts: money transfer to another app user account or to a non-user via an ACH transaction. We have enabled the app for P2P payments and allowed transfers from other banks’ accounts, so users can top up their app accounts with cards from other banks. Users can also top up their accounts with cash at any bank branch.

• Family mode

As we mentioned earlier, migrants often send money to their families who remain in their home countries. With the Family Mode feature, users can distribute money between different family members who have accounts in the app instantly and without fees.

• Early paycheck

Users can receive their salary a few days before payday. To do so, they need to ask their employers to process payroll through the app’s banking partner.

• Microloans

Users can obtain microloans through the app’s banking partner without bureaucracy or delay. The app assesses the user’s creditworthiness based on transaction amounts and grants a loan equal to a certain percentage of the sum of transfer.

• Apple Wallet & Google Pay Integration

​​Immediately after successful registration in the application, the user can add their virtual card created in the app to Apple Pay or Google Pay. This allows the user to pay for their purchases with their card even before they receive it.

Development process

We used the Scrum framework to execute this project. One iteration lasted three weeks, two of which we spent implementing the requirements from the iteration backlog, and the third week was spent testing and debugging.

At the end of the three-week sprint, we held a demo session to demonstrate the functionality increment to the client. They installed it on iPhones and Android devices for user acceptability testing. Any resulting notes or update requests were passed on to us, and we implemented them concurrently with the following sprint.

Technical Solution Highlights

There are multiple integrations with third-party services that entail multiple dependencies. Any technical issue on the part of a service provider can cause an issue that is beyond our control and can affect the performance of the app. So we had to consider different scenarios and develop a fallback plan for such cases.

In addition to logging system events and a built-in online chat that allows users to notify app support of untoward behavior (error alerts or other issues), the team also sets up uptime monitoring for external services. This monitoring is configured with the early warning via email or SMS if a service is unresponsive.

No less important is the dedicated environment for the pivotal Mbanq service and stable API where the updated versions are deployed in sync with the newer mobile app versions.

Results & Future Plans

It took us 13 months to deliver the solution to the client. The apps have been PCI DSS certified and released to the app stores.

iOS and Android apps are expected to cover more than 30 million users who need a solution tailored specifically to their goals, and our client expects all of these people to become customers of the banking partner over time. Our near-term plans include integrating the check cashing feature, which allows users to deposit checks into their savings accounts online. As for Itexus, we will maintain and support the apps and help our client’s business grow by leaps and bounds.

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