When İşbank decided to design a daily banking experience for the next generation, it found itself in a sector with more than 600 fintechs1 already competing to capture an exploding market with the tens of millions of young, digitally savvy customers. The bank assembled a team and challenged them to develop a banking app in just six months. The team delivered, and only three months into the pilot launch of the app, it managed to attract one million registered users. Within 12 months, Nays became the fastest-growing banking app in Türkiye, with more than four million downloads and three million registered users. Ceyda Yalçın, the Nays app leader, sat down with McKinsey’s Andrew Roth to discuss Nays’ winning formula of cutting-edge technology, a gamified banking experience, and a value proposition that delights customers through a focus on simplicity, fun, and rewards.
An edited transcript of the podcast follows. For more conversations on venture building, subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Andrew Roth: From McKinsey’s business-building practice, Leap, I’m Andrew Roth and welcome to The Venture, a series featuring conversations with venture builders about how to design, launch, and scale new businesses. In each episode, we cut through the noise to bring practical advice on how leaders can build successful businesses from scratch.
Podcast transcript
Andrew Roth: Hi Ceyda, welcome to the show. Nice to have you.
Ceyda Yalçın: Hello. Very excited to be here and share our story.
Andrew Roth: Why don’t we get started as we normally do on our show by having you tell us the origin story of Nays. Our clients and listeners like to hear about the market conditions that drove you to launch this app. Can you also give us a little bit of a window into the boardroom and management discussions that led to the greenlighting of Nays?
Ceyda Yalçın: As you know, the Turkish financial sector is undergoing a massive change driven by technology and innovation. İşbank is challenged by a vibrant and diverse fintech ecosystem that offers new and convenient ways to manage money. These fintechs appeal to millions of customers, especially the young and digitally native ones who expect simple, easy, and transparent banking solutions. Türkiye has more than 600 fintechs, with a record-breaking investment of $89 million last year. So the competition is fierce, and the stakes are high.
We also have a very challenging regulatory environment in Türkiye, where financial regulations protect the market but also encourage innovation and diversity. So they are opening doors for new players, new business models, and digital transformation, which means more players, applications, and competition every day. To stand out in this growing market, we need to create new value propositions to delight and benefit our customers. That means we have to both understand and meet the expectations of digital users looking for cutting-edge technology.
Türkiye has a large young and digitally savvy population. There are over 45 million people below the age of 35, with a 70 percent smartphone penetration. Türkiye has more than 85 million mobile bank accounts, with over ten million digital accounts created every year. These young customers want easy, simple, understandable banking solutions, as well as user-friendly customer experiences that make their lives better.
The main challenge for competing banks are regulatory restrictions on know-your-customer (KYC) processes and digital marketing activities. So we need to find innovative solutions to provide services with the same quality and speed as our new competitors. Our main goal was to adapt to those new market dynamics by minimizing the risks and maximizing the quality of experience.
Andrew Roth: It sounds like with the regulatory setup and the Turkish youth segment, there’s a clear opportunity to create a new digital banking app. Was it easy to get the green light from the parent company to do this?
Ceyda Yalçın: First of all, we were privileged to have the full support of our CEO from the start. And we started with a vision to lead this market, design the next-generation daily banking experience, become the biggest player in this market, and acquire millions of customers.
I want to share our CEO’s aspiration in his own words: “To reach millions of customers—especially the new generation who love gaming, shopping, and socializing on digital platforms, but are not very interested in banking products and services—and create a distinctive value proposition with an ecosystem fully integrated with the digital world.” We shared this vision with the board, along with our value propositions, which were backed by solid evidence from customer tests, benchmarking, and service.
We created a new brand, Nays, and a new app for daily finance which focuses on simplicity, fun, and rewards. We set ourselves apart from the competition by offering an easy and gamified banking experience. My team and I took on the challenge of developing this new app in just six months, and had four goals in mind.
First, to become the fastest-growing daily finance app in Türkiye. Second, to reach millions of new-generation customers. Third, to integrate with the most popular platforms and services and become a part of this growing digital ecosystem. Finally, we aim to achieve more than ten million downloads and acquire more than four million active customers by 2027. This was also a unique experience for us, since we worked with a new team from different cultures and backgrounds, and we appreciated every moment of the journey.
Andrew Roth: How was the personal journey to build the Nays app? How long did it take? I also read that you were able to get to your first million users without much marketing.
Ceyda Yalçın: We launched our first minimum viable product (MVP) and most essential features in late 2021. We reached our year-end target of one million registered users in only three months during the pilot launch, well before the official launch. But it was a challenging test period for us, because the load on all these new systems was very high, and we were developing new features for the official launch.
This was a difficult time to inspire everyone to take the right actions and solve all problems with a customer-oriented approach. It required confidence, courage, determination, and resilience, because it was a turbulent three months, and we had to stay calm and confident to focus on what needed to be done. During that time, demonstrating high standards of performance and problem-solving was very important, as was supporting and empowering team members.
Andrew Roth: You mentioned that you were able to generate a million customers during the initial three-month pilot phase. How were you able to attract so many users without spending a lot on marketing?
Ceyda Yalçın: It was word of mouth. We also launched a referral campaign, which worked very well to publicize the benefits of Nays with attractive financial rewards that were costless. And customers were promoting Nays on our websites, creating videos on how to use and benefit from our app.
Andrew Roth: It sounds like you were offering cashback referrals, and customers then started creating their own content to promote and explain Nays.
Ceyda Yalçın: Yes. And we didn’t communicate like a typical bank. We used different colors, different brands, and different designs, and I think this user-friendly and unique experience attracted everyone. The registration process was also very easy, so new users were able to quickly benefit from Nays.
Andrew Roth: Tell us a little bit about some of the key features. There’s peer-to-peer money transfers, gamified cash benefits, and instant microcredit. What do you feel drove the most interest initially?
Ceyda Yalçın: First of all, the hassle-free onboarding process with no hidden fees or conditions. And then the user-friendly interface that lets users manage their daily banking and shopping with ease. The cash-benefit program was also very attractive, which rewarded customers with cashback and gamified incentives. We also offered exclusive deals and discounts on popular digital platforms and services. Finally, we built attractive financial products, such as microcredit investment options without limitations or restrictions. This was Nays’ main value proposition.
Before developing Nays, we conducted extensive customer research with more than 1,000 customers and learned about their financial needs, expectations, preferences, and behaviors. We discovered that they value free money transfers, easy access to loans and services without any limits, gamification, and attractive campaigns and cashback opportunities. They also wanted a customer experience resembling those of the applications they use every day.
Andrew Roth: I love that. I think a lot of companies across different industries have been able to compete and disrupt just by improving onboarding and, of course, the rest of the user experience. But just nailing the onboarding sounds like a key success factor so far for Nays. What were these cashback programs? Was this your version of a loyalty program to offer customers simple cashback with merchants, or was it something else?
Ceyda Yalçın: It’s a simple cashback model, but it’s available through a customer’s most preferred sectors or merchants. In gamification, we had a “Scratch and Win” game. So if you use Nays while shopping, you have an opportunity to win the game.
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Andrew Roth: How does a customer win the game?
Ceyda Yalçın: There are four boxes, and you scratch these boxes as if it was a physical experience. If you find the three common numbers, you win.
Andrew Roth: I get it. Sort of like a lucky draw, a game of chance.
Ceyda Yalçın: Yes.
Andrew Roth: How have you evolved the brand? Are you investing in go-to-market on paid media and partnerships and influencers, or have you been able to scale up? Also, I think you have close to three million registered users now. What’s the journey from one to three million been like from a marketing perspective?
Ceyda Yalçın: First of all, with the referral campaigns and word of mouth, we reached our year-end target in only three months, which was one million registered users, as I mentioned earlier. Then we added our microcredit feature and launched the app with various advertising activities. We used a celebrity and introduced the app all over Türkiye with television and radio campaigns.
We became the fastest-growing finance app in Türkiye and now have more than four million downloads and three million registered users in just 12 months. As of today, we have more than one million active users. We also use influencer marketing. We are on TikTok with different use cases, influencers, and creative scenarios.
We outperformed other major fintechs in Türkiye, because it took us only one year to achieve four million downloads, while they needed 20 to 50 months to reach 2.5 million. I think our great marketing campaigns, our innovative approach, and our ability to connect with younger generations helped us achieve this result.
Twenty percent of our users are new to banking and under the age of 35. I think they love Nays because it offers them a different experience from traditional finance apps. Because İşbank stands behind the application, it provides a great sense of trust. It’s borrower-friendly, it’s gamified, and it’s free. It also offers users the opportunity to be rewarded by gift money as long as they continue to use the product, and have fun along the way.
Andrew Roth: It’s also interesting to hear how you’ve been able to grow without a large customer acquisition cost per user, by leveraging the referrals and being strategic about your mix between mega, macro, and nano influencers. What’s in the future for you and Nays? Is it expansion into other types of financial products, or is it more just about maintaining growth?
Ceyda Yalçın: Big plans for the future. We want to offer more features, more benefits, and more value, of course. We want to create value beyond conventional financial practices, and offer all sorts of banking products. In addition, we started to deepen our presence in the ecosystem by offering easy payment and borrowing options with a digital prepaid card.
We also want to integrate the loyalty programs of our business partners into the ecosystem. But that’s not all. Nays has strong growth and revenue potential; we’ve created a digital asset with a valuation that’s already ten times our investment. We plan to evaluate the spin-off options very soon.
Andrew Roth: Obviously, you’ve built a team, with a culture around that team. Many of our clients in corporate venturing struggle with this the most. How do you attract the right talent, how do you keep the right talent, and how do you build a culture where you’ll be able to retain people for the long run?
Ceyda Yalçın: We built Nays with a team effort that involved our technology partner, and all our other business partners. We wanted to create a culture that fosters innovation and collaboration, so we worked very hard to deliver the best possible outcomes and adapt to the speed and agility of fintechs. First, we implemented agile management practices very effectively, then we empowered our teams to take ownership.
We also wanted to foster innovation and make data-driven decisions. With these data-driven decisions, we achieved an autonomy that aligned with the organization, because we need to collaborate with the business units of our bank and need to co-create our value propositions. These data-driven decisions and intense stakeholder management were critical to gain their trust, enthusiasm, and support.
In the end, everyone who supported us in the organization was part of this achievement. I think the team’s quality of execution and autonomy, the intense stakeholder management, and most importantly, the speed of delivery, were the pillars of our success.
Andrew Roth: As you’ve gone through this journey, have you developed your own leadership style to maintain the momentum and culture? I’m sure it wasn’t all smooth sailing. You must have had some ups and downs and lessons learned.
Ceyda Yalçın: I have learned so much during this process from my team, from the leaders who crossed my path, and from everybody who shared their wisdom with me and with my team. I think being in touch with your team, having one-on-one conversations, and listening to them was an important lesson.
I also tried to enlist the help of leaders and experts to get different perspectives before deciding on a solution. It helped me and my team make the best possible decisions in challenging times. That was the most important learning.
Andrew Roth: It sounds like you came up with a way to syndicate data and decision making across different levels of leadership. How has the success of Nays benefited the parent bank? Are you sharing capabilities and knowledge on how you do design, product management, and marketing? Or is it completely separated?
Ceyda Yalçın: It’s not separated. We benefit from the business units and their experience. And the banking sector is not like other sectors because, as I mentioned, it’s very regulated. We were involved with a zero-based design and wanted to think without any restrictions. But at the end of the day, we did have some restrictions and they helped us overcome regulatory problems.
Our mother bank is the biggest private bank in Türkiye and has a lot of experience with payment systems and the card business, which was very important. If you act like a fintech, you move very fast and are very fruitful, while the main bank makes a lot of investments and moves forward with different strengths, at a slower speed. You can benefit from that strength, but if you want to be very fast, I think you should run. So the main challenge was: Will you run, or will you walk with the mother bank?
Andrew Roth: It sounds like you had the freedom to run, which probably led to the success you’re having right now.
Ceyda Yalçın: Yes. But there was a risk assessment there. You should run, but you shouldn’t fail.
Andrew Roth: That’s often what happens with corporate ventures, right? They want you to be like a start-up, but they want success. I just want to go back to the question on culture. You had mentioned something around being data-driven. When you walk into the office every day, how are you living the data-driven part of your culture? Do you have performance dashboards up, net promoter score dashboards up? How are you looking at the data from a customer and performance perspective?
Ceyda Yalçın: We have dashboards, but it’s not about the dashboard. I think it’s about the culture. Because in the problem-solving process, everyone has their opinions. But sometimes you should examine the facts, the data, and find the reality. The opinions shouldn’t be louder than the facts.
So in our problem-solving sessions, if there are no facts, if there is no benchmarking available, or if we haven’t conducted any customer tests, then we question it. Because first of all, we should be customer-centric. That means conducting customer tests at almost every step. And if we are in a problem-solving process, we should work and collect all the data and solve or share it in a comprehensive way.
Andrew Roth: I like that. No gut feelings in your product planning or product road map, while holding the bar high on being customer-centric.
Ceyda Yalçın: Yes, but when you become too strict about something, I think it’s not very good for the team. You should be balanced, because in times of crisis, when you don’t have the time to analyze, sometimes trusting your gut feeling is very important as well.
Andrew Roth: Ceyda, thanks for sharing about the journey with Nays, and wishing you continued success.
Ceyda Yalçın: Thank you.
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