MobilePay by Danske Bank

Danske Bank has been in a challenging situation with regards to its image in the past year due to negative reactions to its New Standards image campaign and the introduction of a customer segmentation programme. Their image ratings have been at the lowest point and needed to deliver on the promise of setting new standards.

Danske Bank wanted to become a first mover within mobile payments by delivering the most convenient and desirable solution that could be used by anyone in Denmark.

The ambition was to make something that was way smarter and easier than both cash and m-banking solutions.

80% of the Danish population have the national debit card Dankort and 68% have a smartphone, making a card-based mobile payment system very attractive.

Focusing on making a really useful and attractive mobile payments app for people to use in a peer-to-peer context, Danske Bank hoped for a large user base before enabling people to use MobilePay as payment solution in retail and businesses.

Even though there are several great mobile payment solutions around the world, Danske Bank really wanted to set a new standard within the category with the best user experience and design.

For many people, it was a hassle to transfer money to each other with existing m-banking solutions, as it required at least two things: sharing account numbers and using our national login system NemID, which is a physical card with keychains. Both are obstacles not designed around the social context of transferring money, making it both difficult and awkward.

To make it easy and available for all bank customers in Denmark in any given context, it had to be free of charge, card-based, use phone numbers, not use NemID, and allow people to sign-up within the app.

This made MobilePay a standalone solution, not requiring you to sign up through an e-bank, at the ATM or at the branch, as seen with most other mobile payment solutions. For people not signed up to MobilePay, a SMS will notify them that there is money waiting. This enables users to send money to anyone without having to wait for the recipient to install and sign up to MobilePay.

The intention was not only to build the transfer functionality around the user context, but also the sign-up process, allowing people to instantly download and use the app anywhere.

MobilePay has been downloaded more than 500.000 times since its launch in the beginning of May and currently has more than 400.000 active users. That is equivalent to 13% of all smartphone users in Denmark. More than half of the MobilePay users are from other banks than Dank Bank. Since launch, more than 150.000.000 DKK has been transferred through MobilePay.

MobilePay has become a tremendous success and is truly embraced by people at all ages, being both Danske Bank customers and non-customers.

People use it at restaurants and bars with friends, to split gifts, at the flee markets and in many other situations. We also see small businesses, such as kiosks and bodegas together with associations and clubs starting to accept MobilePay. There is a huge demand from retailers asking for a business solution, which is currently the next phase of implementation.

Lastly, the launch of MobilePay has had a very positive effect on Danske Bank’s image rating. It’s has become much clearer and tangible for people to understand that Danske Bank is striving to set new standards.

One of the critical success factors during the development process has been that the fewer steps the better.

We looked at other existing solutions and noticed that even though they should be easy to use, most of them had way over 20 steps by counting the number of taps on the device.

The app was designed around the main purpose: easy transfer of money. The result is a front page (after you’ve entered your access code) which is ready for you to enter an amount by having the numpad up and a view where – instead of having traditional input fields – the input field becomes the interface.

Once you’ve entered the amount and chosen a recipient, you only have to slide to confirm. We chose the slide-functionality because it reduced a conventional two-step confirmation button into a single, easy action. Once confirmed, a receipt is shown to the user.

Any unnecessary steps, such as activating input fields or navigating to something that should be on the front-page, has been eliminated or moved. This has brought the number of steps down to only 7. We’ve managed to cut the transfer flow in more than a half, comparatively speaking.