Ukrainian monobank has more than 6 million users, Mobilny Oshchad has 3 million users. The user base loyalty is not the only thing they have in common.
They both are simple, technological, and user-friendly, due to the efforts of their developer, Ukrainian IT services company Alty. The very team worked on the design for many banking apps you could find on your smartphone.
Today, Alty is a leader in full-cycle-development of global banking and fintech apps. The company’s portfolio counts more than 200 apps, with user geography ranging from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East and Africa.
All of this is based upon Alty values and expertise, tuned to its mission: to create products loved by users. Alty aims to attract more than 1 billion users globally, and the company is steadily going towards this goal.
Together with Alty AIN.UA is telling the story of this Ukrainian business. Its approach to product-making secured Alty’s high credibility among local and global clients and made it a leader in CEMEA banking and fintech.
Alty’s story began in 2009 when the team had been working on a project for an Australian client. The company was specializing in iOS design and development back then. Gradually its portfolio was filled with small Ukrainian projects from different markets, with Australia remaining the target market.
Several years passed, and Alty started to actively pursue its global vector, tackling not only European markets but the US, China, and India. The Ukrainian company had only 10% local customers back then, and the biggest one was PrivatBank.
Everything changed in 2017 when Oleh Gorohovsky and Mykhailo Rogalsky paid Alty’s office a visit with the idea of monobank. Since then, more and more Ukrainian clients have been turning to Alty, and their share at some point averaged 80%. At the same time, Alty is completely focusing its efforts on global banking and fintech, developing, and honing its expertise.
In 2019 and 2020 Alty started a partnership with Visa and Masterсard, working together on global projects. The team’s expertise in design and software started to attract clients from the Middle East and Africa.
“It happened in the very first month after monobank release. Only beta testers had mono cards then. I saw a guy using mono card in Gulliver business center. I couldn’t resist and ask: “Why monobank?” And the answer was: “That’s the best thing that's happened to me in the last few years.”
Since then, we began the active transformation of the company. We realized that we’d like to see more people made happy by our products, and that we’d like to feel even more proud about that. Our main goal was to make apps people love.”
“When a business comes to Alty it surely gets a quality product easy to use. Our product will be a problem solver. While working on it, we can help, consult, and even debate with our client for the sake of the product. Product quality is always paramount for us.
And business does not always know what it needs and how it should be implemented. We are operating in multiple markets with a multitude of clients, and that gave us the experience — the most valuable thing in product development.”
Today, Alty has more than 200 products in its portfolio that vary in complexity, from mobile client apps to CRM systems for managing financial organizations.
The company partnered with PrivatBank, FUIB, Raiffeisen Bank International, Oshchadbank, and many other Ukrainian banks. Nowadays, many fintech companies and banks from Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Moldova, Nigeria, and the US are among Alty’s clients.
“Why does a global business choose Ukraine and Ukrainian IT companies? The secret sauce is our people and their expertise. We are committed to the result. And having Alty’s vast experience in working together with various specialists from banking, fintech, and IT, I can confirm that there is something special about us.
If we are working on a product, we treat it as if we are creating something for ourselves. This self-feeling can provide a more powerful outcome, and clients certainly value it.”
Alty’s key advantage is in its profound expertise and a great team. The company has chosen its focus and does not sidetrack other markets, working exclusively with banking and fintech.
“A good team with seniority on each and every level can save lots of money for the business. Our many years of experience in banking and fintech allow us to foresee problems and keep clients safe. Our expertise helps the business to get a high-quality result without wasting money and time on missteps.”
To achieve this goal, the company is hiring only those designers and developers who are experienced in these niches, and who can deliver good quality solutions. Alty ultimately prioritizes quality over quantity.
“For every Alty team (be it designers or developers) the main goal is to deliver a high-quality product. The process of its creation is a compound of many nuances. What drives us greatly is to see how our products influence people’s lives and changes them for the better. The first utmost thing for us is a result and the second — is a way to achieve it. We never pause, and we don’t care about a template approach to solving problems. We will always find a new way of getting things done.”
It is based not only on the actual carrying out of the task — app design and development — but on previous profound business and user base research, concept creation and validation, implementation and further support of the product.
“Our approach is grounded in base product development guidelines, augmented with our experience, gained from multiple projects during all those years of partnership and searching for an individual approach. That’s how we shaped the process that helps to effectively deliver top-notch results to our clients and make great projects.”
This stage is crucial for all future design and product decisions because that’s when the evidential base is being gathered. We use a variety of frameworks that help us to gather all the information needed for further work. During presale and project assessment, the client tells us about their ideas and requirements, and we already know which tools we will use.
Primary frameworks include business interviews with a client, competitive analysis, and client’s ecosystem analysis, quality research of the client’s user base, including in-depth interviews, UX/UI Review, and functional mapping.
At this stage, our team and client visualize all the ideas. It’s not the final UX/UI design yet. Still some space for dreaming left. We can think about remedies for clients’ pains, and we get a chance to make the most intense impression on the client — to paint the ideal picture of the product, that later could be transformed according to technical and security terms.
The concept validation or User Testing process starts after that. Its main purpose is to save the clients’ money and maintain top-level product efficiency at the same time. User Testing helps to understand how users will interact with our prototypes and ideas. After that, they have to be filtered and polished, for it’s too expensive to change anything during the following production stage.
In design, this process is comprised of two stages. The first is UX, including UX architecture. It helps to understand how the app will function on a high level. The second is UІ. It also can have the substage — visual style production, if the client doesn’t have it or is eager to change the current style.
The UI design itself is rather a deep stage, unifying all the rest. In fact, this is a functional design that has to seamlessly unite with the tech part. This stage shows “the gown” that a product will wear on its way forward.
The Support Stage summarizes all the next stages of product support. We either support the product if the client wants to outsource it or serve as mentors. In such a case, Alty is responsible for product quality and directly takes part in all future releases of the product.
