Designing Customer-Centric Branchless Banking Offerings

Abstract

Branchless banking services have taken on a significant challenge: developing new channels through which to provide financial services to customers who have mostly used only cash before. Understanding the customer experience is critical, but focus groups and surveys may not be well-suited to understand customer needs in an environment with so many new and unknown dimensions. Intrigued by the success of design research in other industries, consultative group to assist the poorest (CGAP) set out to explore how human-centered design (HCD) can be applied to branchless banking and its unique challenges.