How to design banking apps that work for all ages

The death of cash has been her­ald­ed for some time and the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has seen soci­ety take a big step towards becom­ing cash­less. Health and safe­ty con­cerns have led to some busi­ness­es insist­ing on con­tact­less trans­ac­tions, while banks con­tin­ue to nudge cus­tomers to rely on online ser­vices as more and more high street branch­es remain shut­tered. 

For Yvonne, 82, the pan­dem­ic has meant using a smart­phone bank­ing app for the first time. Like many old­er peo­ple, she’s been heav­i­ly reliant on cash in the past and is not as famil­iar with tech­nol­o­gy as young cus­tomers. 

“My fam­i­ly has reas­sured me my mon­ey is secure, that noth­ing can hap­pen to it, and I’m slow­ly feel­ing more con­fi­dent using it [smart­phone bank­ing]. But I wor­ry about press­ing a wrong but­ton and lock­ing myself out of my account and los­ing access to my sav­ings,” she says. 

With the pan­dem­ic mak­ing it hard­er for old­er peo­ple to go to bank branch­es, ATMs and post offices, many have had no choice but to adopt dig­i­tal bank­ing to man­age their mon­ey and bills, accord­ing to the results of a sur­vey by Mas­ter­card, pub­lished in Novem­ber. 

Fifty-two per cent of peo­ple aged 65 and old­er have used a bank­ing app since the start of the pan­dem­ic, with 58 per cent find­ing them eas­i­er to use than expect­ed and 23 per cent feel­ing more con­fi­dent as a result. 

Designing age-friendly user experiences

Despite the Mas­ter­card research also reveal­ing that 88 per cent of peo­ple aged 65 and old­er think con­tact­less pay­ments are more con­ve­nient, 45 per cent said they will be less reliant on cash in the future, so the accel­er­at­ing shift towards dig­i­tal bank­ing threat­ens to leave some old­er cus­tomers behind. 

Tra­di­tion­al banks are being encour­aged to design user expe­ri­ences (UX) that are more age friend­ly.

Peter Bal­lard, co-founder of Fool­proof, a prod­uct and ser­vice design com­pa­ny whose pre­vi­ous clients include TSB, argues although tra­di­tion­al banks are known for run­ning on lega­cy sys­tems, it’s not the tech­nol­o­gy itself that’s hold­ing them back, rather their “lega­cy think­ing”.

He says: “Until the pan­dem­ic, the accept­ed wis­dom was old­er peo­ple pre­ferred tra­di­tion­al bank­ing meth­ods. What this ignored was how some old­er peo­ple have felt exclud­ed from dig­i­tal bank­ing because it’s poor­ly designed for their needs or lev­el of com­fort with tech­nol­o­gy.”

One area where banks can improve their dig­i­tal offer­ings is by con­sid­er­ing larg­er screen for­mats and the devices they sup­port, adds Bal­lard. Some old­er peo­ple use iPads as they pre­fer the larg­er text and may have dif­fi­cul­ties in click­ing a call to action on small­er screens. 

Screens shouldn’t be over­loaded with infor­ma­tion and ele­ments should be arranged and coloured in a way that makes them stand out and helps old­er peo­ple to nav­i­gate apps more eas­i­ly, advis­es Sab­ri­na Duda, head of UX at human insights agency VERJ. 

“Old­er users may have worse eye­sight or may get tired more quick­ly, so user jour­neys have to be as con­cise and short as pos­si­ble,” says Duda, adding that while younger cus­tomers enjoy the fric­tion­less nature of dig­i­tal bank­ing, old­er cus­tomers could ben­e­fit from fric­tion being added into their user jour­ney. This could be in the form of extra lay­ers of authen­ti­ca­tion or ver­i­fi­ca­tion to slow down the jour­ney before the user makes a finan­cial deci­sion. 

Building confidence and trust

Anoth­er area where there’s plen­ty of room for improve­ment is onboard­ing. Liam Gille­spie, vice pres­i­dent of design at per­son­al sav­ings app Chip, says the sign-up process needs to be as clear and straight­for­ward as pos­si­ble. Build­ing an app that isn’t specif­i­cal­ly for old­er peo­ple, but can be used by them – Chip’s old­est cus­tomer is 92 – means explain­ing things as clear­ly as pos­si­ble and not let­ting the dig­i­tal offer­ing get bogged down by bor­ing, finan­cial jar­gon. 

Bal­lard agrees. Old­er peo­ple aren’t afraid of dig­i­tal bank­ing as such, but are con­cerned about mak­ing mis­takes with their mon­ey, he says. A more stream­lined, sim­pler onboard­ing process will enable them to man­age their mon­ey with con­fi­dence.

Boost­ing con­fi­dence in smart­phone bank­ing is, ulti­mate­ly, going to be key if banks want to bridge the dig­i­tal divide and ensure old­er peo­ple don’t become unbanked. Accord­ing to the Access to Cash Review, the UK’s cash sys­tem has reached a tip­ping point and is like­ly to be obso­lete by 2035, with few­er than 10 per cent of trans­ac­tions being cash based by the end of this decade.

As vital as it is for banks to improve their dig­i­tal UX, there will still be a need for them to main­tain and offer tra­di­tion­al chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Some old­er peo­ple will always pre­fer tele­phone bank­ing to dig­i­tal bank­ing regard­less of how well they get to grips with smart­phone apps. 

“When speak­ing about design­ing empa­thy, peo­ple often talk of doing this by mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy more human. But peo­ple mis­in­ter­pret this as mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy like a human, and end up mak­ing bad chat­bots which are over­ly-friend­ly that tend to frus­trate or con­fuse cus­tomers” says Bal­lard. “Design­ing empa­thy means allow­ing cus­tomers to speak with a real human when they need to.” 

That said, the needs of old­er cus­tomers shouldn’t be over­stat­ed. Secu­ri­ty, sta­bil­i­ty and access to advice and sup­port are what cus­tomers need to trust their bank, regard­less of their age. 

“At a basic lev­el, old­er cus­tomers just want the same as younger cus­tomers: an intu­itive, easy-to-use and sim­ple-to-under­stand way of man­ag­ing their mon­ey,” Bal­lard con­cludes.