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/Client Story

humm

Introducing a standout BNPL platform in New Zealand.

Creating a standout payment experience

  1. 01Helped launch a new BNPL solution in New Zealand
  2. 02Developed the humm mobile app
  3. 03Provided quality assurance to ensure a seamless user experience

Client

hummgroup

The Challenge

In New Zealand, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solutions are becoming increasingly popular. In 2018, an estimated 20% of all clothing and footwear purchases in the country were paid for using BNPL, and in 2019 over 228,000 kiwis had signed up for BNPL services. 

One of these services was humm®group’s Oxipay. Although Oxipay had gained reasonable traction in the market, it was similar to many of the existing solutions offered by hummgroup’s competitors. hummgroup decided to reimagine Oxipay in a way that would allow it to offer a unique benefit to users and stand out in a crowded market.

The Solution

hummgroup rebranded Oxipay as a revolutionary BNPL new solution: humm®. They mapped out an updated user journey for humm, with the aim of streamlining the previous Oxipay experience. After launching in the Australian market, they partnered with us to rebuild humm for the New Zealand market. 

We worked with them to envision a version of humm that would resonate with kiwi customers. We also helped them refine the humm brand, which had been envisioned as a bold, bright departure from the generic white-and-blue branding of standard BNPL solutions. 

In collaboration with hummgroup, we completed the redesign of humm to meet all of the legal requirements to launch in New Zealand. Our designers and product managers designed and validated the new onboarding experience. Additionally, we created a unified style guide for humm brand and applied it to the humm mobile and web applications. Our developers worked to integrate the humm mobile app into a new set of APIs, and brought the code quality up to current industry standards.

Like Oxipay, humm taps into a growing preference to make payments in installments without incurring interest or credit card charges. It offers users the opportunity to break up a purchase amount into smaller dollar amounts, due at regular intervals. However, Oxipay offered terms similar to its competitors: the total sum of all Oxipay arrangements could not exceed $1,000, spread across a maximum of 5 active purchases. 

In contrast, humm is the first BNPL solution in New Zealand to offer terms up to $10,000, setting a new standard for BNPL in the country. The app allows users to choose between two different categories: “little things” and “big things”. “Little things” can cost up to $1,000 in total, to be paid off every week or every fortnight for 10 weeks without any monthly or establishment fees. “Big things” can cost up to $10,000 in total, to be paid off fortnightly for up to 24 months.

In both categories, repayments are completely interest-free, and a $10 fee applies to late payments. Once a person signs up and becomes an approved humm user, they can use humm for both online and in-store shopping. The experience has been designed to be as simple and streamlined as possible, in line with hummgroup’s mission to make “a richer, fuller life affordable for everyone”.

The Result

humm launched in September 2020. Within days, it had climbed app store rankings to become the #1 app in New Zealand in the Finance category, for both iOS and Android.

The impact so far

4.6/5

App store rating

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