Bnext

Background

Bnext is the main Spanish neobank that was born in 2017. Their value proposition: prepaid bank card without commissions when paying or withdrawing money when the user is traveling abroad.

However, in March 2020, the pandemic arrived and turned all the company’s plans upside down. Users could not travel, Bnext’s main way of monetization as a «travel card» didn’t work anymore. The market forced them to find new opportunities and new users.

Starting point: analyzing the value proposition

The Research team needed to contextualize Bnext’s current situation. We wanted to understand its product, its business model and its value proposition at that time (April 2020). We work on this through a process of ethnographic research in which we conducted diverse field exercises.

At this point of the research, we started to have a first contact with the users which allowed us to superficially understand their relationship with Bnext. In the next phase, we went deeper into their needs and analyzed in detail their financial behaviors to find opportunities.

We started analyzing users inside and also outside of Bnext. It was essential to understand deeply their financial behaviors and needs as the only way to build meaningful experiences, and also monetizable products for the company. We wanted to analyze the following topics in the fieldwork:

– When they used Bnext (on a daily basis and in exceptional situations).

– Routines with Bnext and other banks or financial solutions.

– Their relationship with financial products, investment and savings.

– Behaviors with shared spending (in their daily life and in exceptional situations: with family, traveling, with friends, flatmates…).

At this point in the research, we worked side by side with the Data team, extracting and cross-referencing quantitative and qualitative data, in order to get a more holistic view of the different user profiles.

We categorized user behaviors according to different variables:

Financial Life Stage: kids/juniors (learning to be financially autonomous), young adults (autonomous but financially dependent), single (financially independent), couples (shared management of finances) and families (merged management of finances).

Wealth management: the spender, the one who is trapped by their economic situation, the financial passive, the financial minimalist, the «millennial» investor, the «old-school» investor or the one who is fused with the «excel», among others.

Relationship with loans: anti-borrowing, for whims, for specific needs, for needs maintained over time, borrowing from friends or family, using it for addictions…

At this point, we began to “play”. We crossed different user profiles with different behaviors. Establishing this type of categorization allowed us to find patterns and insights in a very clear way. This helped us to detect a micro-universe of financial behaviors ready to transform into opportunities.

All the analyzed users’ micro-behaviors were the best source of inspiration to generate solutions with which to build Bnext’s new value proposition. The goal was to change the paradigm of financial management and become the center of users’ money management. How we could do that? Giving users the necessary tools to manage their money easily and also covering their financial needs.

According to the research results, the new value proposition had to be based on four basic principles:

Autonomy: users must feel they manage their finances with complete freedom. Bnext should adapt to each user and not the other way around. So the customization of all functionalities and products within the app is a basic requirement.

Effortless: money management without realizing it. The user experience has to be as efficient and effective as possible to make life easier for the user.

Dreams: we must help transform the user’s dreams into realities. Bnext must accompany the user throughout their journey. Being a facilitator for the user to make an ‘upgrade’ in their financial life: maximize their savings, reduce their expenses, financial advisory…

Shared money: in the era of the collaborative economy, becoming a shared money management tool is a ‘must have’. The behaviors and needs around shared money are infinite and easily monetizable.

We conducted multiple ideation workshops where infinite functionalities showed up, complying with these principles. We selected the best opportunities found through a prioritization exercise in which we used different criteria: interest, impact, engagement, monetization and feasibility of implementation.

We transform all the opportunities we found into mobile screen prototypes and video prototypes with the objective of telling internally the scope of Bnext’s new value proposition, inspiring with the infinite solutions that could be built in the company’s future and highlighting the monetization possibilities of this new strategy based in: shared money, effortless, autonomy and making real your financial dreams.