Banking group Crédit Agricole addresses teenage banking via BankMeApp

Banking group Crédit Agricole addresses teenage banking via BankMeApp

Award winning app for teenagers and parents

The new mobile app from banking group Crédit Agricole Italia supports teenagers and parents in the daily management of their finances.
Through an interface designed for improved usability for young users, the app enables visibility of available funds and transaction history, requests to parents for additional funds through a secured chat, set up of specific saving goals and peer-topeer payments.

High customer satisfaction

High customer satisfaction amongst teenagers and parents

Raised customer engagement

App becomes part of daily life

Industry recognition

2017 ABI Award – Innovation for Retail Customers

Client

Crédit Agricole Italia S.p.A.

Crédit Agricole Italia S.p.A. is a banking group covering many market segments: individuals, professionals, SMEs, large corporates, agricultural and food processing, and private banking. The group offers a broad service portfolio, including: consumer loans, corporate investment banking, asset management, insurance, and private banking.

Challenge

Enable teenagers to manage their finances easily and securely

With the aim of making financial services more appealing to young people, Crédit Agricole organised an internal contest in which over 20,000 employees worldwide took part.

Thirty finalist ideas were selected and presented at the event “Bank4Teens”, with BankMeApp selected as the overall winner.

Banking group Crédit Agricole Italia – the Italian bank of Crédit Agricole Group – was entrusted with the implementation of this new app. As a long-standing partner to banking group Crédit Agricole Italia, GFT was selected for the development of the app because of its strong expertise in mobile payment services.

After analysing user requirements, GFT presented different prototypes to banking group Crédit Agricole Italia in which user experience and interfaces were carefully designed to capture young people’s attention through engaging graphics and “playful” usability.

Engagement

Design and implementation of secured mobile app with strong focus on usability

After agreeing on a prototype, the development and implementation phases took place, requiring about 1,000 man-days of GFT’s involvement. The team supported the customer in the implementation of a range of services, ensuring the functional coverage of the application in compliance with multichannel architecture. Particular attention was paid to the solution’s invulnerability, providing different security levels both on app side and mobile server.

A technologically advanced solution was achieved through the use of:

hybrid mobile technologies to simplify application maintenance
cloud platforms for chat management
a dedicated component (mobile server) for business processes coordination and for the decoupling of the app from the bank’s core systems
Jiffy payment system

Benefit

The app for financial issues shared by teenagers and parents

The app was released in the spring of 2017, following a phase of piloting and feedback.

Shortly after its release, the Italian Association of Banks (ABI) selected BankMeApp as winner of the “2017 ABI Award – Innovation for Retail Customers: the bank for the family and young people”.

BankMeApp allows teenagers to monitor revenues and expenses directly on a smartphone, securely request and obtain additional funds from their parents through the chat function, send money to friends through Jiffy’s circuit and manage a piggy-bank area for creating shared savings goals with relatives.

From the parents’ perspective, the app is an effective tool for financial education as well as day-to-day money management.

“In the case of the app launched by Banking Group Crédit Agricole, the strong focus on responding to specific customer needs and on ensuring a great ease of use, have been critical to the success of the project.”

Danilo Micheli

Project Manager "BankMeApp"

GFT Italy