Case study
ČSOB Smart
Smarter banking, with your account always at hand
About the client
ČSOB and ČSOB Poštovní spořitelna
ČSOB is one of the largest banking institutions on the Czech market. It offers a broad range of financial products and services to private individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, and corporate and institutional clients alike. In the Czech Republic, ČSOB also trades under the ČSOB Poštovní spořitelna brand.
The original ČSOB app
The current ČSOB app
What we were asked to do
The client’s brief
When we joined the project in 2017, the bank in fact had two apps: alongside the“main” one, a second for what was then Poštovní spořitelna — essentially the same app in different colours. Both had been built by another software company and both had, over time, stopped meeting users’ expectations and the demands of the day. The iOS and Android versions also needed bringing into line with the current conventions of the two operating systems, which of course keep changing.
“Make the app as modern as possible, and as simple and pleasant to use as we could.”
A brief that mattered
The bank picked us for it
Our task was to build a brand-new smart banking app: as modern as possible, and as simple and pleasant to use as we could make it. Hand in hand with that went a full visual refresh, dressing the app in a clean, contemporary look.
The challenges we were facing
Thorough preparation
It moved fast. Take over the know-how, keep everything running without a hitch, learn the ČSOB ecosystem. We were closely involved in the user experience design and drew on what we had learned on projects in other industries. The visual side of the app came entirely from our studio.
“What we value is that we and the client moved on from the original client-supplier model to a stronger partnership built on mutual trust and professional know-how,” says Vojtěch Michek, project manager at eMan.
Keeping it smooth
Agile delivery
The agile approach was new here too: rather than two teams working in parallel, there is effectively one team made up of people from both companies. The bank comes with ideas for new features, we give feedback so that the development cycle runs smoothly and quickly, and together we set priorities on agile principles — which is a large part of why the project runs well and lands with customers.
“…the development cycle ran smoothly and quickly.”
Teamwork was the key
Improving as we go
“The architecture is excellent — it lets us scale the team. A large number of people have worked on the project from the start, in the high tens, and thanks to the technologies we use they don’t get in each other’s way. That makes us very flexible: we can swap individual parts of the app in a short space of time and improve it step by step. We don’t have to retire components and rebuild them from scratch. We are re-dressing the app piece by piece — a given part simply switches to a new version, which then runs alongside the older ones without trouble,” explains Štefan Tóth, Android team leader at eMan. Another relatively unusual thing for a project of this kind is the dedicated technical team, which looks after the technology alone rather than marketing or sales.
“We are re-dressing the app piece by piece.”
An app built like a kit
“The app is well balanced between simplicity and robustness. We manage to keep it consistent across its parts, so a developer can get their bearings quickly even in a section they have never touched before,” explains Luboš Hořínek, iOS team leader at eMan.
Some apps innovate in leaps, with an updated version shipping once or twice a year. ČSOB Smart innovates continuously, which is possible precisely because the individual building blocks can be changed on the fly.
“In the design phase we first focused on the concept of a scalable app that would be ready for future growth. So we designed an interface that covered not only the features of the day but also the ones we couldn’t build yet. That left us with a final design that met clients’ current needs while most of the planned features already had their place in it and fitted the overall concept,” says Ondřej Straka, design leader at eMan, of the strategy.
A look under the hood
iOS vs. Android
We wrote the Android version in Kotlin. On iOS the language was Swift, and the app is additionally optimised for iPads. The original app had been written separately for each device; today a single version covers them all. In April 2021 the app went through a major facelift and functional overhaul that changed both its design and the way it is operated.
What can it do?
The app is built on the everyday essentials of banking — direct debit mandates, QR and SEPA payments, instant payments, full-text search. On top of that sit a number of rather less common features that make it genuinely smart. Here is a selection of the most interesting ones:
Savings Envelopes
The Envelopes feature lets clients set a budget across any number of categories (envelopes) and stay inside it. Beyond always having the money for a given category ready to hand, it teaches financial planning and saving towards a specific goal. (ČSOB markets the feature in Czech as“Spořicí obálky”.)
Spare Change
“Drobné” is the feature that lets clients invest and save small amounts — genuinely small change, a few crowns with every purchase. Each card payment is rounded up to the nearest twenty crowns and the difference is set aside. Once three hundred crowns have accumulated, they are sent automatically to the ČSOB Bohatství investment fund, so every crown earns its keep. The app can also be set to put aside two, three or five times the amount on each purchase.
NaDobrouVěc
Supporting Czech non-profits is now even easier with the NaDobrouVěc (“for a good cause”) service. It is aimed at anyone who wants to give over the long term while keeping full control of their contributions. The amounts are a matter of crowns, but they are regular: with every card payment the feature sends a fraction of the sum to the account of a chosen non-profit. It works much like Spare Change, except the money goes to charity rather than to an investment fund.
Onboarding
What is the fastest way to join ČSOB? The Smart mobile app. A current account can be opened in it in a few minutes, and the quickest route is Bank ID — all you need are the credentials for your current bank. Alternatively you can use two identity documents and an account at another bank: photograph your ID card and driving licence or passport in the app and the bank verifies your identity. Then comes choosing a username and password, agreeing to the terms and sending a one-crown payment from another account as a further identity check.
Click to Pay
Copying out card numbers is a thing of the past thanks to Click to Pay. The payment buttons are in e-shops and everywhere else people pay. Much as with Apple Pay and Google Pay, all it takes is loading your card into Click to Pay — the payment button from Mastercard and Visa — inside the ČSOB Smart app.
Kate, the virtual assistant
Kate already helps in more than 140 situations across five hundred areas, is integrated into dozens of banking systems, works with vast amounts of data and keeps learning. She is not a chatbot but a virtual assistant built on artificial intelligence. She speaks Czech, understands colloquial language and can handle the bank’s agenda the way a person would: fill in a payment order or split a payment by QR code, change a card limit or arrange travel insurance, set up an automatic credit card repayment, or negotiate and arrange a loan.
“We think very highly of our work with eMan and we are glad the relationship has moved to a partnership. They don’t simply deliver our briefs — their specialists come with ideas and improvements of their own, propose new features and give us valuable pushback on our thinking and our tasks. Thanks to how well the two sides work together, in September 2022 we passed the milestone of one million clients using our Smart mobile app.”
Tomáš Stegura
Head of Digitalisation, ČSOB
The result
A modern app, an account at hand
ČSOB Smart is now a mobile app that holds its own against modern competition. It gives clients convenient, fast access to their account. Smart features let them make a payment, check a balance, find the nearest ATM or arrange travel insurance in a few taps. For anyone who wants to try the app without signing in, there is a demo version.
“The app keeps growing more popular among users.”
4.7/5
user ratings
500 000 +
downloads on the App Store
4.6/5
user ratings
500 000 +
downloads on Google Play
1 000 000 +
Celebrating a million mobile users
In the first half of 2022, ČSOB SMART
grew its users by 61 %
and its transactions by 46 %
(Figures describe the position at the end of 2022.)
