Nubank’s Secret To Becoming The World’s Biggest Digital Bank: A User-Friendly App August 4th, 2023
Courtesy of Rest of World, a look at Brazil’s Nubank whose app has helped it become the world’s biggest digital bank:
In Brazil, the Nubank app is a one-stop shop for all things banking. Like most banking apps, it allows for online payments, loans, and money transfers (be it through wire transfer or Brazil’s popular instant transfer system, Pix). That seems standard now, but in Latin America, where in-person bureaucracy still is the norm for much of the banking experience, this was a profound disruption back when the app was launched in 2014.
The Nubank app home screen presents account balances, quick operations, card management, and loan options.
Balance, savings, loans, and returns are all concentrated in a single display for easy decision making.
The app’s design prioritizes big numbers and stark color contrasts to show key information, such as positive (in green) and negative (in red) returns on investments.
The Nubank app is available in Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia, but its Brazilian iteration continues to be at the cutting edge. It was a leader in introducing single-swipe credit adjustments and an in-app automatic investment option — which Argentina’s Mercado Pago went on to emulate thereafter. Overall though, Nubank’s appeal may just come down to its simplicity and user-friendliness.
Nubank’s founding philosophy was to be an institution built on on easy access and transparency. Its app’s clean layout makes expenses and credit limits easy to visualize and interact with. As the app design evolved, more functions were introduced, including a cryptocurrency exchange, with graphs clearly displaying acquisitions, returns, and projections, and a marketplace where users can access discounted offers with major retailers and sellers.
The app’s user-friendly approach is a major driver of Nubank’s popularity among younger Brazilians. As opposed to many traditional banks, which still ask for printed proof of credit history to be presented in person, all new applicants need to do with Nubank is to download the app and send pictures of their ID and a selfie. If something is not clear to a user, the app offers quick access to troubleshooting with real people at help desks, not AI chatbots.
But this simplicity has come at a price. Critics of Nubank say it’s made it easy for fraudsters to present stolen information on the app to open an account in another person’s name. The concentration of all functions in a single app also makes it convenient for criminals across Brazil, who are now keener on stealing smartphones than wallets, as some reports say the Nubank app is more prone to hacking and theft.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2023 at 9:55 am and is filed under Brazil. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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