Product & engineering · v1 scope
The strategy, extracted for development
No competitive teardown, no benchmarking case — just what to build, in what order, and the constraints that shape it.
A six-layer loyalty and engagement program, built around one structural advantage a wallet-only competitor cannot copy: the operator can lend — so the program can reward good behaviour with cheaper, faster credit, not just bigger discounts.
Ordered by trigger frequency — how often each layer gives a customer a reason to open the app.
| Layer | What it is | Trigger cadence | Build note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily Habits | Streaks, fraud-awareness and financial-literacy quizzes, light puzzle games. The only layer rewarding showing up and learning, not transacting. | Daily, no transaction required | Full mechanics in §4 |
| Moments | Instant, transaction-triggered mini-reward — spin, reveal or small bonus — maximum once a day, credited instantly. | Up to daily, per qualifying transaction | Spendability gated by Cooldown A — §5 |
| Foundation | Automatic cashback on everyday transactions, real-time, with no points ledger. | Every transaction | Default experience; no opt-in complexity |
| Trust Score | Weekly-recalculated score from transaction volume, bill-payment punctuality and savings behaviour. Unlocks faster approval, higher limits, better pricing. | Weekly recalculation | Requires credit-risk model integration — §7, Phase 2 |
| Marketplace & Purpose | Partner-funded voucher and benefit marketplace, plus the purpose track — literacy badges, small-business milestones, community impact. | Periodic / aspirational | Funded by partners, not core margin — §6 |
| Onramp | One-time bonus for completing biometric verification and clearing Level 0. | Once, at KYC upgrade | Sequence around Cooldown B — §5 |
The mercenary test — an ongoing check, not a launch decision
Track whether customers with rising Daily Habits and Moments engagement also show rising Trust Score movement. Engagement up with a flat Trust Score is the early signature of reward-chasing rather than real habit formation — fixable by strengthening the Trust Score payoff before it shows up as churn. Both series must be queryable by cohort from day one; this is an instrumentation requirement, not a reporting nice-to-have.
Naming and exact thresholds are the least important part of this section and should be workshopped against the target MFB's actual product suite, risk appetite and credit policy. The layering — onramp, foundation cashback, credit-linked trust score, instant moments, free daily habits, partner-funded purpose — is the part worth protecting regardless of what the tiers end up being called.
| Tier | Qualifying behaviour | Foundation benefit | Trust Score unlock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | Account opened, first three transactions | Welcome cashback credit | Baseline score established |
| Sprout | Regular monthly transacting — bills, transfers, top-ups | Elevated cashback on two to three transaction types | Score visible; first loan pre-qualification signal |
| Root | Sustained three months or more, on-time bill payments | Partner marketplace access unlocked | Faster loan approval track; modest limit increase |
| Harvest | High, consistent activity plus a savings product held | Priority support; increased Moments reward rate | Preferential pricing on qualifying loan products |
| Legacy | Top-decile activity 12 months or more, or literacy and small-business milestones | Full marketplace and purpose-track benefits; invitation-based perks | Best available pricing and limits; fast-track for new product pilots |
Trigger: a free daily check-in action — app open plus a tap — never a transaction. Reward: escalating points with weekly milestones, so the thirty-day mark is worth reaching.
| Day | Baseline | Milestone bonus | That day's total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 1 pt | — | 1 pt |
| Day 7 | 1 pt | +2 pts | 3 pts |
| Day 14 | 1 pt | +4 pts | 5 pts |
| Day 21 | 1 pt | +6 pts | 7 pts |
| Day 30 | 1 pt | +9 pts | 10 pts + tier credit |
Format: two to three questions per session, rotating content, one to two points per correct answer. The explanation is shown after every answer regardless of correctness — education is the point, score is the hook.
Starter question bank — expand over time, weighted toward branchless-banking fraud patterns
Track this metric: quiz completion correlated against downstream fraud-dispute rates by cohort. If the correlation holds, this layer is partially self-funding through avoided dispute and fraud-loss costs — report it to Risk and Finance that way, not just as an engagement number.
These are confirmed, not theoretical. Each one changes what the UX is allowed to imply.
Cooldown A — funds-received hold · 2 hours
Cash-outs, online purchases and top-ups against newly received branchless-banking wallet funds are held two hours (SBP, confirmed). Any instant reward credited via Moments is itself “funds received”. Build requirement: credit it visibly and instantly, but the UI must say it becomes spendable after the standard window — do not imply instant usability.
Cooldown B — security-action hold · 2 hours
A separate, broader freeze on all debit transactions, triggered by account registration, new-device registration, email change, or MPIN change or reset — confirm the target MFB's equivalent rule before build. Build requirement: if the Onramp/BVS flow involves a new-device registration, expect a blanket debit freeze immediately after, not just on the bonus. Credit and celebrate the Onramp bonus at that moment, but sequence messaging so it doesn't imply the customer can spend anything at all for two hours afterward.
Level 0 ceiling · Rs. 25,000 per day
Confirmed directly against the source terms. This is the reason the Onramp bonus exists: a Level 0 customer is structurally capped out of meaningful engagement with the rest of the program until they clear it.
Points liability · IFRS 15
Model Daily Habits points separately from Moments points — different volume and redemption shapes: many small habitual points that pool up, versus occasional larger instant rewards. A single blended breakage assumption will misstate the liability. Finance and Audit sign-off is required before launch.
Liability = Outstanding Points × (1 − Breakage Rate) × Cost Per Point
Shariah framing
If an Islamic-window variant is offered: frame rewards as discretionary institutional generosity — hiba — tied to real transactions, never as a promised or rate-benchmarked return. Chance-based mechanics are workable if the entry is a transaction already happening for its own purpose, not a discrete paid stake. Get named Shariah board sign-off on the final mechanic — not the marketing copy — before launch.
| Layer | Funding rule |
|---|---|
| Onramp | Fixed, small, one-time cost per KYC upgrade — budget it as a customer-acquisition cost. |
| Foundation | The bank's own margin, kept deliberately modest — its job is trust-building, not maximum reward value. |
| Trust Score | Self-funding: better pricing for lower-risk, higher-engagement customers reduces cost-of-risk enough to offset the pricing concession. |
| Moments | Fixed marketing and engagement budget, capped like a CAC allocation — not an open-ended prize pool. |
| Daily Habits | The cheapest layer: small, non-cash points, largely redeemed into the partner-funded Marketplace. The fraud quiz is specifically trackable as partially self-funding via reduced dispute and fraud-loss costs. |
| Marketplace & Purpose | Funded predominantly by merchant and brand partners paying for elevated visibility and earn rates. |
The deposit angle
Average-Daily-Balance gating on tier progression (Root, Harvest) is a funding source, not a cost — every rupee of ADB a tier pulls into savings and current accounts is low-cost retail funding that reduces blended cost of funds, measured in basis points. Track this jointly with Treasury, not just Product.
| Phase | Timeline | Ship |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | 0–3 months | Onramp bonus, daily check-in streaks, Foundation cashback and the basic Seed–Root tier ladder, all on existing transaction data. Breakage tracking instrumented from day one. |
| Phase 2 | 3–9 months | Trust Score built and validated against existing credit-risk models, piloted with a controlled cohort. Fraud-awareness and financial-literacy quiz content library shipped. |
| Phase 3 | 6–12 months, parallel to Phase 2 | Moments — instant transaction-triggered rewards — shipped. First three to five funded Marketplace partners onboarded. |
| Phase 4 | 12–18 months | Purpose-linked track — literacy and small-business milestones — launched. Lightweight, purpose-themed puzzle layer shipped, only once the habit loop is proven. Marketplace scaled. Full Shariah-compliant variant if applicable. |
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Quietly becomes a discount-only clone, losing the credit-linked differentiator during build | Protect Trust Score as a funded, tracked workstream from day one — not a Phase 2 item that slips |
| Regulatory or Shariah non-compliance in reward structuring | Compliance and the Shariah board involved in mechanic design, not just marketing review |
| Points liability understated, creating an audit finding | Joint Finance and Audit liability model built and reviewed before launch |
| Cannibalising loan margin through overly generous Trust Score pricing | Pilot pricing and limit changes with a controlled cohort before full rollout; risk-model validation as a launch gate |
| Execution quality — support, redemption reliability — undermines an otherwise sound design | Treat redemption reliability and support responsiveness as core product KPIs from day one, not afterthoughts |
| One big-bang release delays time-to-market | Phase 1 — Onramp, Foundation, streaks — ships on existing data, independent of the more complex Trust Score work |
Named here so scope-creep has something concrete to point back to.
The names and thresholds are workshop material. The layering — onramp, foundation cashback, credit-linked trust score, instant moments, free daily habits, partner-funded purpose — is the part worth protecting.