Case study: a business banking app in 6 months

Launching a new business direction for a bank from scratch and delivering a ready-to-use, multifunctional application for small and midsize business (SMB) clients within six months is an extra credit challenge. We are sharing the experience of how a team of over 70 experts from tekmates (ex red_mad_robot Central Asia) identified the needs of entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan, developed, and successfully launched a digital bank for Home Credit Bank in 2022.

Timing for the entire banking product development from scratch took less than six months. The initial release of the digital bank offered full banking functionality, foreign economic activity management, and a sales dashboard.

The client was Home Credit Bank — one of the largest global banks headquartered in Prague (Czech Republic). Thanks to its partnership network, by the beginning of 2024, it has:

• 150 million customers worldwide.
• Assets worth 803 billion KZT.
• Equity of 157 billion KZT.

Home Credit Bank is among the top ten largest banks in Kazakhstan by equity. At the start of project in 2022, the bank’s client base in Kazakhstan included over 119 million individual customers using deposits and consumer loans.

In 2022, changes in the service market allowed Home Credit Bank to quickly occupy a niche in digital services for small and medium-sized businesses. Large players withdrew, and at the same time, SME clients needed functional and reliable tools for foreign economic activity (FEA), daily banking, and foreign exchange operations.

Kazakhstan's market had nearly 2 million entrepreneurs, with 1.6 million categorized as small businesses and over 300,000 merchants actively engaged in online payments. No bank fully addressed the needs of these entrepreneurs, making it essential not only to develop a user-friendly daily banking application, but also to save Home Credit Bank’s potential audience from having to manage operations across 2–4 different banks, each with its own pricing structure.

tekmates was chosen due to its expertise and ability to quickly and deeply integrate into the client's processes, build analytics, and flexibly address challenges.

We recognized the potential for Home Credit Bank with the successful implementation of a new product, having no analogues on the market. Our expertise, gained through consistent collaboration with businesses, experience in developing B2B services, and the well-coordinated team of leading experts helped in creating and implementing a successful strategy for the convenient application that facilitated transactions, foreign economic activity, and sales.

The project aimed to address the full pool of the following challenges for business users:

1. launch a fully functional banking product in 6 months, although experience shows that similar products typically take an average of 2.5 years to develop and are released in iterations.
2. deliver an exceptional user experience — the product must be user-friendly, understandable and effective aimed at seamless transition to the platform.
3. manage foreign economic activity and online sales needs by integrating banking and business processes into a unified system.

In multitasking mode, the key requirements for business representatives includes:

• optimizing routine financial operations.
• convenient work with non-financial services and business development tools.
• transparent and reliable framework for managing foreign economic activity and currency contracts.
• functional service that does not require extensive time to understand settings and features.

The successful launch of the product opened access to a rapidly growing segment of the Bank’s client audience and contributed to increased loyalty among customers engaged in other business directions.

Annually, 400,000 small businesses are established in Kazakhstan, e-commerce grows by 80% every year, and over 4 million Kazakhstani citizens are involved in this economic sector, with 85% of cashless transactions.

Project Roadmap consisted of three main phases:

1. Market research, product analysis, and USP development.
2. Designing functionality in three directions.
3. Product development.

Expertise and years of experience in digital banking from CEO Agiis Konkabayeva helped establish effective processes at every stage. The entire management team, in synergy with the bank, was involved in business analysis, design, and the development of all CJMs at the right moment.

An analysis of the market revealed that the SMB segment in Kazakhstan is growing at an exceptionally dynamic pace. By 2022, it accounted for 36% of the country’s GDP. E-commerce is also rapidly expanding across all sectors, and in retail, alongside the demand for digital banking, there is significant growth in the use of non-financial services.

The product hypothesis was developed based on in-depth interviews with B2C and B2B entrepreneurs engaged in trade and services across major cities in Kazakhstan. Customer profiling helped to reveal insights:

1. The availability of installment payment options is important for users. Instead of a commission, which is not favorable for sellers, a subscription model is a better solution.
2. Foreign economic activity and cross-border transfers are essential but are time-consuming and expensive. Foreign trade should become a fast and convenient process.
3. Transfers between legal entities are carried out using digital signature keys tied to a PC. An efficient process should be as simple as transactions between individuals, with instant sending and crediting.
4. The working hours of bank branches limit entrepreneurs to weekdays. Business operations need to be accessible 24/7, including weekends and nights.
5. Interbank fees, crediting speed, and differences in QR codes for each bank create barriers to financial operations. Entrepreneurs need to accept payments from individuals via QR codes from any bank with a unified low commission and instant crediting to their account.

Entrepreneurs need legal support and risk-sharing when interacting with legal entities. The bank should act as a partner that shares responsibility with businesses, enabling them to enter into contracts with counterparties on their own platform, providing updates on the progress of contracts, and monitoring the fulfillment of obligations.

The value of the new digital product for entrepreneurs is built around addressing three key needs:

1. Convenient instant transfers between legal entities.
2. Cost-effective cross-border transfers and the best international banking solutions for foreign economic activity.
3. Sales statistics in a personal account, showing turnover and providing opportunities to increase it through installment programs.