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Project Overview

Pocketbook is the most beautiful mobile banking experience you could have - no matter which bank or account. We do this by bring all your bank accounts (ANZ, CBA, Westpac, NAB etc.) into the one mobile app - giving you a single view of your money. And we're not like any banking app you've seen before. We've taken some of the technology that powers the Google's, Facebook's and Apple's of the world and are applying it to banking.

Organisation

Pocketbook

Team

Alvin Singh, Founder, Pocketbook & Lead Developer
Bosco Tan, Co-Founder, Pocketbook & Lead Marketer
False Behaving Animals (http://falsebehavinganimals.com/), Creative Agency

Project Brief

We set out with the question - 'if a technology company were to start a bank today - what would it look like'? That's what we're about and what we're building.

We were seeing people across the web, on blogs, social platforms and forums that there was a need for something smarter than what your bank gives you around your spending (200 character description filled with unnecessary junk and an amount). So we have set out to build a new type of banking experience. One where you can be with any other bank, have any account and all your data is in the one place - with one login. And you have a single view of your money and spending.

We took awhile to get on mobile but when we did - we made sure we got the core pieces right - launched on the iPhone 8 weeks ago and have had an incredible response from users -
- Featured by Apple across AU and NZ
- Ranked first in Finance (and 20th overall) in the Apple Appstore - ranking above Paypal, ATO and all the major Australian banking apps.
- Top 20 App in Australia
- Recognised as "the best app of its kind we’ve ever seen.” by CNET.

Project Need

The average Australian banks with just above 2 financial institutions with approx. 3 products with each (transaction account, credit cards, savings etc.). They pay a number of bills every month and then there is all their other spending to go with that. Just saying that is a handful and trying to keep on top of it is an unimaginably difficult and laborious task.

Until Pocketbook, there wasn't anything out their which helped people manage all their spending without having to think or lift a finger - to give them some piece of mind of how things were financially. We started with solving that problem for Australians.

To describe the experience -

Within 60 seconds of signing-on your accounts will be hooked in. 80% of your transactions will be automatically categorised into smart categories which you can later delve into to see how much your spending on different areas of your life. We automatically detect your bills from your spending history and forecast when your next bills will be and send you notifications if a bill payment gets missed - we automatically notify you if you get charged fees from anyone including your bank.

And every Sunday we send a quick snapshot of how things are going to keep you on top of things.

User Experience

Today we are on iPhone and the web - by the times of the awards (end of September), we will also be on Android.

Mobile is incredibly important for us and we took some time to get there. We didn't want to rush it and made sure we built the building blocks and iterated very quickly on the web platform before we made the move to mobile.

When we looked at mobile, there was a very clear and different use-case to our web offering. It wasn't just about displaying the data in a mobile efficient manner but also the actions and steps taken on the mobile are very different to what occurs on our website.

We worked very quickly with a mobile prototype early on and went through rounds of rapid iterations. In this phase we teased out what worked and what didn't. Once we had the right formula we then went into a heavy design phase taking cues from where the iOS design landscape was at the time. This is again shifting as iOS7 comes online.

Today when you see the app it looks quite simple but a lot of thought has gone into making it as delightful for the user as possible. We are improving in areas we didn't get time to completely get right the first time but we have a very solid foundation to build upon.

Project Marketing

By far and way the foundation of our marketing is to build the most awesome kick-ass product in this space known to man. The marketing strategy sits on top of that and when you have that product sitting below you - the marketing strategy becomes that much more effective.

We have not used many of the traditional marketing paths to date but solely relied on a few key factors -
- ensured that we made the best product in the space - reached top of the Appstore in our category and subsequently featured by Apple
- the app solves a compelling problem and was featured by a number of media outlets
- the existing user-base had been asking for mobile from day 1 of Pocketbook so when it came out - they were out and about telling others

This approach reflects the size and where we are at with Pocketbook (9 months in). We are focused on the product and making sure that every user is delighted by their experience.