Role
Principal Designer and Design Manager
Problem
Creating an attractive digital wallet for a young, newly financially independent user
Impact
Created a first in class digital card product in a 3 months
Work
Product thinking
Product design
Prototyping
Design management
01
Digital debit accounts
Creating a ‘sticky’ payments platform powered by a pre-paid Debit Card for Tier 2 & Tier 3 India.
Pepper Money offers a pre-paid Debit Card for the large swathes of Bharat that are naturally credit-averse and might lack access to credit in the first place. Using the Pepper Card to make payments at merchants, while using the built-in UPI features to send and receive money and make bill payments, users get a constant stream of rewards, in the form of Pepper Coins and Assured Cash-backs, which they can then redeem both in the in-app Shop as well as merchants and physical locations.
02
Operating off the initial demographic research done by the Pepper team, they created a user persona with a little bit of backstory to weave a tale about this person, their life and circumstances.
Rahul
Lucknow
Age
25-28 years
Occupation
Consultant
Rahul, a typical middle-class individual, is striving for financial independence. Earning about ₹40k per month, he contributes to household expenses and enjoys time with his girlfriend, Simran. His hobbies like shopping, movies, and dining take up nearly 80% of his income. He actively seeks offers, deals and coupon codes to help with expenses.
Now, he realizes that as life progresses, he may need to save some money for a future with Simran. Simran has just started working to manage her expenses and isn't in a position to help Rahul with budgeting or financial planning. But despite that, their love story continues!
Simran
Rahul's girlfriend
Along with his ambitious office colleagues, he regularly posts and follows new content on social media, keeping up with the latest trends. He's attracted to the glamour of big cities and aspires to live a lifestyle similar to his elder cousin Raj, who resides in Delhi. To experience this lifestyle, he occasionally takes short vacations to hill stations and goes on bike rides with his friends. He also seeks out trendy spots in his own city. He's cautious about taking risks due to his parents' warnings about being deceived by enticing schemes.
03
A snapshot of
customer needs
They have exposure to the tier1, external world and are fairly aware of the latest trends around but lack connect and trust to try new things
This customer is always on the lookout to make life a lot more comforting, fulfilling and rich in status but him beginning to get financial independence and his value conscious nature always makes him think twice.
Coming from humble backgrounds in most cases, he is judicious in every financial decision he makes and will do a clear value analysis before adopting a product
Is highly driven by rewards/savings/extra + in deals to get the maximum value for money
Is averse to credit due to debt traps, social stigmas to credit – is scared with a fundamental mind set of credit products being against him rather then helping him increase his purchasing power
04
Creating a visually approachable platform that encouraged users into setting up debit accounts with Pepper - and cross selling them into other products within the ecosystem like the games (earn burn) and the discounted store section.
The core of the entire product was the debit account and digital card, which then rested upon a payments and rewards platform. Parallel to all this was creating a modular market within which sellers could creating appealing sales for their products where those rewards and points from payments could be used.
