Implementing Transferwise payment into LHV mobile apps

For the first time in the world Transferwise service was implemented into a bank. The partner was LHV, Estonian innovative bank. As the development partner for LHV mobile apps, we share some insights from this journey.

The story

We had been working with the LHV mobile apps for some time when the bank came to us with the idea. At Transferwise, there was as well just the idea at that time, no ready API. Above all, there was a very strong will to do it, expressed in the initial startup-like plan to launch in one month. We love that kind of approach :) At the kickoff meeting, it became clear that there are several challenges ahead that will complicate the project as not many customer and back-office flows had been thought through. Plus three involved parties, which makes any loop longer.

LHV mobile applications are known for its simplicity. Likewise Transferwise is known for excellent usability. Even if the newly implemented features may not be as simple as viewing and changing your card limits, we tried to keep high level of usability in every step.

We at Codeborne started developing the mobile application GUI and waited for Transferwise services to get ready. In mutually iterative approach, many changes were made during development. These days were very productive, when Transferwise developers were in our office. Air is still the best communication channel and progress was noticeable. Quite some time went for bug-tracking, if something did not work. Is the mobile application broken, something wrong in between in LHV proxy or at the eventual Transferwise services? Skype is good for general communication, but to track down technical bugs while everyone is not constantly following the thread? Nope. In short, all this took time. Plus it was always 2 applications, iOS and Android.

Lessons learned

If we would start again a similar project, we would go all the way to put all teams in one room for even some days to work on prototype and think through all the flows. That will save significant time along the way. Electronic ways for solving these questions are like going by foot somewhere versus driving a car.

Did something fun happen along the way?

The bank made the application with the new functionality public before the official launch date outside the closed testing group. Although only for a short moment before it was discovered, some tech savvy journalist got a glimpse at it… Whether there was some heat at the bank, we may only guess.

Bottom line

We love creating something completely new, no matter how crazy it may sound initially. We created the standard and at least one more innovative bank has joined Transferwise.