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Product strategyUser researchEngagement
Pay with emotion: humanising mobile transactions
Send to mobile had grown 50% in volume, but the experience was purely transactional. This project gave peer to peer transfers emotional and cultural weight.
- Organisation
- MCB (MCB Juice)
- Role
- Product strategy and user research lead, working with internal teams and external agencies
- Timeline
- 8 weeks
The challenge
The send to mobile feature grew 50% in volume between 2020 and 2021, yet the experience stayed functional and forgettable. Customers were moving money, but nothing about it was memorable or distinctive in an increasingly competitive fintech market.
Why it mattered now
MCB wanted to reimagine the mobile payment journey to lift engagement, widen access beyond existing customers, and strengthen retention through product innovation.
The approach
- Benchmarked Venmo, PayPal and Revolut to understand the category
- Interviewed 8 customers and identified two personas, The Gifter and The Emoji Lover
- Analysed existing transaction descriptions to surface the emotional intent people were already improvising
- Prototyped and tested with 6 participants across 2 gifting scenarios
- Worked with marketing and creative teams on tone, imagery and technical feasibility
What shipped
- Pay Emotions: transfers that carry a personalised message and visual
- Templates created with local artists so the imagery was culturally relevant, not generic stock
- A transfer flow that treats gifting as a distinct intent rather than an edge case
It brought emotional and cultural relevance to a mundane task, making payments feel more human.
Outcomes
- A marked increase in adoption of the personalised transaction feature within months of launch
- Peer to peer transfers became more frequent and more intentional, particularly for gifting
- Positioned MCB Juice as a customer centric product, supporting both innovation and retention goals
- Supported the bank's strategic aim of reaching people who were not yet customers