FCB | aspiringUX

Unifying the mobile banking experience across

African markets

A UX Research–driven transformation across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Botswana.

About Project

FCB Bank operates across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Botswana, each with unique financial regulations, digital maturity levels, and customer behaviors.

Mobile banking ecosystem had grown independently in each country, leading to fragmented user journeys and inconsistent app experiences.

While the bank aimed to strengthen its digital footprint, the lack of a unified experience limited adoption and customer satisfaction.

The project emerged as a strategic initiative to create one unified mobile banking platform that balances local needs with a consistent digital identity.

How we worked as a team

Researcher

Business

Analyst

Project Coordinator

Designers & Developers

My core responsibilities

Planned and executed a mixed-method research sprint, combining qualitative and quantitative methods.

Conducted UX audits, sentiment analysis and competitive benchmarking to identify key improvement opportunities.

Facilitated stakeholder interviews (focus group) sessions across four countries to uncover operational and user challenges.

Led feature mapping and IA workshops with cross-functional teams to define navigation pillars for the unified mobile app.

Synthesised research findings into actionable insights and design recommendations.

Presented findings to leadership, aligning business strategy with user experience goals.

Collaborated with designers and developers to ensure research insights translated into meaningful product decisions.

A mixed-method approach for depth and validation

To uncover the diverse challenges and opportunities across four African markets, we adopted a mixed-method research approach combining quantitative scale with qualitative depth.

This allowed us to validate behavioral patterns at scale (through surveys and analytics) while understanding the why behind them (through interviews, usability testing, and co-creation).

The approach helped bridge business intelligence and human insights, ensuring that design decisions were both evidence-backed and context-aware.

Research findings

Barriers to
digital adoption

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User's challenges

Across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Botswana, research uncovered how deeply everyday realities from branch dependence to fraud fears shaped people’s digital banking experiences.

In Malawi, users couldn’t even register without an active debit card. For those who did, onboarding felt long and confusing, often requiring backend approvals or staff intervention. Fraud was rampant SIM binding became a necessary evil, locking users out whenever they changed phones.

In Zimbabwe, users praised the app’s simplicity but remained trapped in a cash-based economy. Essential banking actions like KYC updates or card requests still meant physical visits. The lack of cross-border transfers pushed people back to branches and informal money channels.

In Zambia, frustration came from limited visibility and control. Users couldn’t access stamped statements, manage cards, or track payments clearly.

In Botswana, stricter regulations demanded physical signatures for most loan and onboarding processes, keeping customers tied to manual, paper-heavy systems despite their readiness for digital.