Kunai Partners With BankShift to Reduce Financial Stress With A Next Generation Personal Financial Management Solution
Background
BankShift is a mobile financial health dashboard that aims to help people manage their American Bank and Crypto (Coinbase) accounts in one place. The goal of the app is to reduce financial stress by providing a single, easy-to-use platform for managing money. With BankShift, users can link their existing U.S. financial and Coinbase accounts, and use the app to securely move money between those accounts, make payments, and send and receive money from their Coinbase account.
The Challenge
Consumer participation rates across all banking institutions has given rise to a complex, and fragmented experience across multiple financial accounts. Consumers must frequently swap between different mobile apps, web portals, and in-person branches just to see their balances, transfer funds, pay bills, and seek assistance.
This fragmented experience wastes time, incurs unnecessary expenses, and decreases customer retention and satisfaction. BankShift recognized that account holders needed a simple, consolidated view of their financial landscape to better manage finances and make informed decisions.
However, BankShift needed a reliable development partner to take their solution from idea to product. They needed an agency that could design, architect, and build an app that consolidated all accounts into a singular access point.
The Solution
A Financial Industry Expert
BankShift approached Kunai in 2020 to build their platform.
The idea was to connect existing banks, credit cards, loans, and investments onto an app that could provide a comprehensive overview of users' financial situations. Built-in insights engines would also help users identify areas for improvement. Additionally, the BankShift platform would also better visualize a user's credit visibility, making it easier for them to make smart financial decisions.
Overall, BankShift would be designed as an easy and convenient way for people to manage their money, regardless of where they bank or what financial accounts they have.
However, as Kunai helped BankShift flesh out the details for their project, they ran into a roadblock:
BankShift would be a bonafide banking app.
The scope of BankShift’s app exceeded that of a ‘data aggregator platform.’ With such sophisticated PII access, financial data analysis, and money movement– BankShift would require cutting edge, banking-level security.
With Kunai’s experience working in financial security and expertise with cybersecurity best practice, they would be building the BankShift platform with compliance and security top-of-mind.
The Process
BankShift tasked Kunai to design, validate the architecture of, and co-develop a unified app for bank account and crypto wallet unification that could facilitate money movement in the U.S.
Designing the Onboarding Process
Kunai’s team went to work designing a seamless onboarding experience for BankShift. These screens would give users the ability to link and view existing financial accounts from one place.
The main design philosophy was to mimic the look and feel of the biggest financial institutions, while minimizing filler and clutter. User-friendly interfaces would make it much easier for customers to understand where to go to find their desired functions.
Money Movement
Kunai opted to rely on user-friendly, robust FinTech API’s to facilitate money movement. By combining all banking relationships into one app, account holders could view and transact between any of their financial institution accounts (including Coinbase) rather than logging into and switching between different apps.
Plaid was used to allow users to connect their financial institutions to the BankShift app while Dwolla was used to enable businesses to accept ACH payments.
The Backend, Security, and Compliance
Kunai leveraged Amazon’s AWS cloud services for the backend architecture. AWS provides unparalleled reliability from anywhere in the world and a flexible suite of integrated solutions for expanded capability.
Kunai’s compliance experts made sure that all development took place with security and compliance in mind. BankShift was provided with banking-level security to protect user data and privacy, and also provided with government identification (GovID) and facial matching to confirm the identities of users, powered by Onfido.
In addition to best-in-class cyber security, Kunai also built a cyber investigation analysis tool. This tool helps organizations visualize security breach sources and associated risk levels. The tool would also provide security and advanced reporting features to help inform future updates and seek out data leaks.
The Result
Kunai helped design and develop BankShift, enabling the easy and convenient transfer of money between financial institutions and Coinbase. With banking-level security, users can enjoy best-in-class data privacy and peace of mind knowing that their information is in good hands.
Thanks to Kunai, BankShift successfully launched their banking nexus app. With deep security protocols, government Identification, and biometrics– consumers can take part in safe and reliable money movement across disparate financial systems like transferring money to friends, family, or other individuals without the need to exchange cash or write a check.