Rapid build for mobile finance

The company’s financial solutions also include Consumer Insurance Services Ltd and Equipment Finance Ltd.

The Challenge

Q Card is a credit card alternative. Cardholders get three months with no interest or payments on every purchase (in store and online) at thousands of places nationwide. Q Card also provides access to a range of interest-free deals and payment holidays with leading retailers. Most cards are obtained in store via a big-ticket purchase on interest-free terms.

Fisher & Paykel Finance wanted to develop a mobile application that would improve the Q Card customer experience, increase usage, and reduce inbound calls to the company’s contact centre. Datacom was engaged in July 2014 and the project kicked off in August.

The Datacom Difference

Datacom and Fisher & Paykel Finance teamed up and completed the Q Card app design through a rapid prototyping exercise. User testing and end-to-end design were completed within a week. Fisher & Paykel Finance wanted the app to be developed for both iOS and Android, and accepted Datacom’s recommendation that separate apps should be created based on shared principles, rather than building for one operating system and adapting for the other.

To customers, the Q Card app appears straightforward. They can log in to their account, check balances, and view transactions. New customers can now sign up within the app directly instead of calling the contact centre, which improves the customer experience and reduces the call centre’s workload.

Behind the scenes, the application is more complex. We built the API layer to link the apps with Fisher & Paykel Finance’s systems. A separate security layer ensures customer information is protected.

The app went live in November 2014. The company had a goal of 30,000 downloads within the first year, and had more than 20,000 downloads within its first month. The app has high ratings on both the iOS and Android app stores – 4.5 stars on iOS and 4 stars on Android.