Banking of the Future — Foreign Payments Solutions for SMEs

An example of a ready-to-implement digital product concept delivered in just 4 days

Do you think it is impossible to build up the concept of a banking product and test it on a small sample of users within just 4 days? Well, we have the recipe to make it happen!

• Use Design Sprint 2.0 as your mode of work
• Gather some top Finance Sector experts in one room for 2 days
• Enable them to voice their ideas on a timely subject — in our case FX solutions for SMEs
• Get them to work with top UX, UI and product designers to come up with a prototype solution
• Test the mock-ups on a sample client base

All the above took place in our second edition of the 10Clouds’ Business Banking of the Future workshops, in which we continue to work on and deliver solutions that pave the way for client-oriented future banking.

Working in Design Sprint 2.0

Just like last year, we chose to work in Design Sprint 2.0, the newest version of the original 5-day Design Sprint, geared-up to work in companies of all sizes where solutions need to be found quickly and decisions made with ease. Design sprints bring all the relevant people together for four days of uninterrupted work, and, importantly, all decisions are made right there and then.

Cross border payments — Expectations Vs Reality

The present situation

Companies of all sizes often seek various solutions in their foreign-trade-related business activities. Yet only a small part of what they need is provided by financial institutions. Such solutions are often limited to cross-border payments and currency conversion. In addition, the transaction fees are very high and unaffordable to many SME owners.

The pain points

The lack of broader provision for SME foreign exchange, and the fragmentation of these foreign trade services makes conducting international business much more complex. It also increases risk and may result in wasted efforts and financial loss.

Our goal

To analyze foreign trade activity and explore solution(s) that support businesses, connect fragmented tools and platforms, improve speed and lead to better ways of conducting business across borders.

How Might We Statements

These helped us to define some of our ideas. The main question we settled on was: How might we add a human touch to automated solutions?

Setting our ultimate goal

We then took some time to consider what the ideal outcome from a potential new solution would be. This is the idea we came up with:

As a customer, I don’t want to have to think about which provider to use when I travel/expand to new markets; I expect banks and FinTechs to collaborate to provide a holistic solution for me.

Exploring ideas for an SME foreign payment solution

Lightning demos

These allowed us to explore some solutions that served as inspiration. Our participants had many examples of existing financial products that serve customers particularly well, including Curve, Revolut, PayEye and Kantox.

Crazy 8s

We then got very creative and each participant made 8 sketches or doodles in just a minute each. At the last step of this exercise, each person sketched their chosen solution and included a catchy name.