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Penta Mobile

Thinslices helped Penta, a German fintech, create a robust mobile banking app, attracting 2,000+ users, enabling Apple Pay, boosting customer ratings, and facilitating a smooth transition to Qonto, strengthening Penta's market presence in Germany.

About Penta

Based in Berlin, Penta started its journey in 2017, and has been Germany's leading provider of digital financial management for SMEs, self-employed and freelancers.  
The end goal of Penta was to create an integrated digital banking platform that brings together the best of financial services integrations, so that their users can effectively manage all their business activities from the same application. Starting from simple payments to accounting activities and credit management, Penta’s end-users have benefited from features like: expense management and international payments, direct debits and batch payments, customized user management and Visa cards, integration with the desired accounting software. 

Being one of the most significant up and running German fintechs with more than 50k users,  Penta was acquired by Qonto in July 2022. The two market leaders aim to generate added value for their customers through further innovation in their products and services within the European market, especially in Germany, France, Italy and Spain. 

Thinslices started its collaboration with Penta back in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, when Penta reached out to us to help them build the mobile version for their digital banking application.

Screenshot 2023-09-14 at 12.01.51

 

The challenge 

How can we build a mobile banking app that would be in parity with the existing web version and give users a sleek and easily accessible platform for everyday use, in a short period of time? 

 

Our approach

Penta’s goal was to develop a mobile app that would complement their existing web platform whilst hitting tight deadlines for market release. After defining the scope, ways of working and the desired product roadmap, we’ve rapidly put together a team of 7 engineers, one UX/UIdesigner and a product manager who were able to quickly start the onboarding process and jump straight into delivery.   

For nearly 16 months, our team’s main focus was to bring a mobile app to parity with the web version, in order to allow Penta's new and existing users to enjoy from the comfort of their smartphone, the majority of features already existent on the web platform. 

Following a first, major and successful release of onboarding new users (sole proprietors and freelancers) in Jan 2021, our team has worked together with Penta to define the next steps of the product roadmap; and we’ve started working to add Sub-Accounts and Permissions features to the mobile app, which facilitated users to organize their business finances under a single account. This second phase of the project was completed before the end of 2021.

During the entire collaboration with Penta, the Thinslices team worked mostly autonomously on all the tasks. We have rapidly integrated with Penta’s product development process, and always strived to deliver on the immediate needs whilst identifying key blockers. Our best practices and delivery methodologies have been recognised and appreciated within Penta’s teams, which led to an ongoing successful and trustworthy partnership.

Post the acquisition by Qonto, our team was asked by Penta to help with the migration of all of their users towards Qonto, and help with the sun setting of the platform, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023. 

 

4.5
Android customer ratings (Increased from 3.9)

4.7
IOS customer ratings (Increased from 3.7)

2k +
mobile users on boarded across iOS & Android 

15/25
OKRs accomplished  

The work with Thinslices has been a true collaboration. We created a fully integrated combined team, working closely with the entire organisation. The lessons learnt from taking on this project are radiating out to other teams within BMJ. The team are happy, productive and having a real impact for our customers.

Ian Mulvany, Chief Technology Officer at BMJ

Technical specifications

 

  • React Native + ocasional ObjectiveC/Swift and Java/Kotlin when needed for coding
  • Bitrise + Fastlane for deployment
    Sentry for issues tracking
  • Google FCM + big query for push notifications
  • AppsFlyer, Snowplow integrations for marketing + data team

Delivery Process

  • % Blocked days = percentage of days, in a sprint, when a feature delivery was blocked. Target number: 0
  • % Delayed day = percentage of days, in a sprint, when a feature delivery was delayed.  Target number: 0
  • AVG Days to test and close = days required for sign-off and ship. Target number: 0.5 - 1day (depending on the complexity)
  • AVG MR closing time = number of hours required for review and merge with common code. Target: 2h
  • AVG SP per developer = average number of story points delivered per developer per sprint. Target: 6SP
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