Scotiabank launched its new app on Tuesday morning with a simplified user experience that includes the ability to transfer money between accounts, manage peer-to-peer payments, bill payments and a new slide-to-pay feature. 

Most of the features within the updated app aren’t new, but a better overall user experience was the objective. The bank examined user behavior from previous versions of the app and based the updates on what the top 85-90% of features customers were using, said Dawson Guilbeault, vice president and head of design for Canada at Scotiabank, in an interview with Bank Innovation. 

The new app is an effort to meet the needs of a user base that demands a simplified experience. Shawn Rose, executive vice president of digital banking and chief digital officer at Scotiabank, said customers have come to expect the same digital experience they get from technology companies like Facebook and Google. The app was built in-house and led by the Digital Factory, an innovation lab launched two years ago by Scotiabank.

“Over time, a bank develops a rather sophisticated, and at times complicated, product shelf,” Rose said. “Interacting with all the features that are in an app isn’t always intuitive.”

Rose admitted that banking experts and technology teams sometimes don’t see eye to eye. Professionals with 30 years of experience in the credit card industry, along with newer employees recruited from the startup ecosystem, can have different points of view regarding the focus of app updates, but a healthy discussion among practitioners led to alignment across functional areas, according to Rose. “If a person is doing a whole-of-market search, if a rate isn’t competitive, digitally native people don’t select that product,” he said. “We had a couple of spirited debates with some really strong bankers about what makes a really good product.”

Accessibility was a top priority for the update, which includes the ability to scale the font, a feature that could help people with limited vision. Scotiabank has a team of eight people focused on accessibility of the interface, and the team is working on predictive features to notify customers of bill payments and how to avoid penalty fees. It’s also developing capabilities to let customers check credit scores, schedule future recurring payments and wire money via Western Union.