Expired: personalised bank cards. Tired: neon orange bank cards. WIRED: bank cards that miaow.
Over the past few years, challenger banks and fintech companies such as Monzo and Starling have been attracting attention with their innovative card design, but one UK startup has taken the trend for bank card innovation to its illogical conclusion with a debit card that miaows like a cat when you pay for something using contactless.
ANNA, which launched its business account app in September 2018, decided on the design after looking for something that would raise the company’s profile while also representing its design-led mission. The company commissioned London design agency PSK to come up with lots of different designs but settled on the feline favourite. “We thought that cats miaowing and the internet – if you put those two things together it would be incredible,” says Daljit Singh, chief design officer at ANNA. A dog was briefly considered, he adds, but the cat – apparently called Pickles – won out.
Actually making a card that miaows proved easier than expected. The card itself doesn’t make any sound; when you use it to make a contactless payment, the associated app notification does its best cat impression.
While it’s obviously designed to attract attention and provoke conversation, Singh says that the miaowing card is not just a stunt. The design is meant to represent the ANNA brand, which caters predominantly to freelancers and small businesses working in the creative industries. ANNA stands for “Absolutely No-Nonsense Admin”, and the brand aims to make business operations seem less daunting, especially for the self-employed or small business owners. “Really for us, it was about how can we apply a bit of fun to this category?” he says. “We thought business doesn’t have to be serious all the time, it can be something light-hearted and something you enjoy.”
ANNA isn’t the first to catch eyes (or ears) with its bank card design. Banks have long touted different cards to represent a certain image to their customers – think gold and platinum cards, which suggest a high-end clientele, or the exclusive black American Express card. Barclays lets customers personalise their card with an image of their choice – so long as it complies, understandably, with a rather long list of guidelines.
In the past five years, the wave of new financial startups and challenger banks has seen some more outlandish designs that stand out from the sea of blue cards offered by UK banking incumbents. Sarah Kocianski, head of research at digital financial services consultancy 11:FS, says Monzo really kickstarted the trend. She’s not sure she believes Monzo’s claims that its eye-catching fluorescent hot coral card came about by fluke, but she concedes the company probably didn’t expect it to be quite so successful as it has been. “From then onwards, the others that followed wanted to do something similar, because they’d seen how effective the card had become as a talking point,” Kocianski says.
Now, every new banking startup seems to have its own card gimmick, tied to the brand image it wants to present. It makes sense: given most of these services are largely digital, the card is pretty much the only physical product that customers can interact with. Brand identity is also particularly important to startups in this sector given the increasingly crowded marketplace and the tight boundaries within which they can innovate on their actual product offerings. Given the strict regulation of financial services, there’s only so much you can do to stand out from your competitors. See also the attention paid not just to the cards but their packaging, with companies hoping to design a “memorable unboxing experience”.
Kocianski relates some of the new bank card designs to the customers they aim to target. While ANNA is going after creatives with its humorous approach, Revolut has made a particular push in the cryptocurrency community, which is perhaps attracted to its rather flashy new metal card. German fintech N26, which launched in the UK last year, also offers a metal card as well as a novel transparent plastic design. Starling Bank’s portrait-oriented card (meaning the writing goes across the width of the card, not the length) offers a more muted approach that might appeal more to professionals. “Starling very much wants everyone to be know it’s a ‘proper’ bank,” Kocianski says.
Read more: The inside story of Monzo's fluky bright coral bank cards
Beyond branding, there are some practical reasons for the new card designs. Starling’s portrait card is meant to reflect the way we use cards today – sticking them vertically in chip-and-pin machines, for example, rather than swiping them horizontally. It also loses the long-ubiquitous raised numbers, which aren’t needed for modern card readers, and puts information on the back of the card instead of the front. Colour can also have a pragmatic purpose; it’s easier to identify a brightly coloured card in your wallet, and some designs even put different bright colours around the card edges so you can see them easily from above.
Is it possible to go too far? Does a miaowing card stray too much into gimmickry territory for something as sober as business finances? Not everyone will appreciate the design, Kocianski says, but if that’s the case then perhaps they aren’t the target customer anyway. “I don’t think you can go too far with it, if it represents your values.”
ANNA, meanwhile, continues to embrace its animal-inspired design mission whole-heartedly. Singh says the company soon plans to launch some VAT tools – with a character it’s developing called “VAT bat”. “I think if we can associate it with strong visual metaphors that are a bit fun, people can remember this stuff a bit more clearly,” he says.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
