The bank partnered with Malauzai to design and deploy a mobile app that meets the unique needs of a traditionally underbanked community, providing users a dynamic, bilingual, mobile banking experience.

“We are constantly asking the question, how do we provide banking services and tools to a customer that may never actually enter a physical branch,” said Ron Strand-Sorrell, executive vice president and chief operating officer, Axiom Bank. “Working with Malauzai, our primary goal was to develop an app that provided users the ability to complete all of their banking transactions from their mobile phone, essentially we wanted to give them the bank in the palm of their hand. We accomplished this with the AxiomGo app and the immediate response from our customers has been tremendous.”

The bank officially launched AxiomGo in December 2017, and the adoption and usage rates especially among Android™ users has increased almost 300 percent. Designed for the underbanked, the app has a Spanish-language option and enables users to open and fund an account and set up direct deposit with a few simple taps on their smartphone. The checkless checking account provides a valuable alternative to prepaid cards and traditional check cashing services that often include hefty fees. Additionally, app users can pay bills by simply snapping a photo, pay a friend, deposit checks, view estatements, receive account alerts, transfer funds and access built-in budgeting and personal finance management tools.

Strand-Sorrell continued, “Our primary goal has always been to make people’s financial lives easier, and for many in our community, AxiomGo provides the first tangible banking experience that not only eliminates expensive fees, but also enables them to perform any banking transaction needed at any time of day, regardless of the bank’s traditional hours of operation or the individual’s current location. The entire app is translated as well providing our users a Spanish-language option which is incredibly important in Central Florida. For many of our customers, this is their first experience with the U.S. banking system and we wanted to ensure the app was intuitive and brought value to their daily lives.”

To accommodate its rapid growth, the bank had anticipated increasing the size of its internal call center. However, since launching AxiomGo the number of calls to the call center has significantly decreased and the bank instead is able to reallocate those resources. Users are actively engaging and using the app’s help feature, yielding additional operational savings across the institution.

“Axiom Bank has an incredible story, and we are very proud that the bank was able to design a mobile experience that gives the underbanked a great digital solution,” said Robb Gaynor, chief product officer for Malauzai. “It’s important that underserved markets gain access to traditional banking services. The bank designed the app to eliminate many of the barriers that often make it more difficult for this market to take advantage of banking services, and in turn has enabled Axiom to better serve its current customers, while also reaching a new audience and expanding its footprint.”