Pensumo · Banking & Fintech
Turning everyday spending into a gateway to long-term saving.
Pensumo was an innovative idea with years of development behind it, but it had yet to gain traction. We first created a version that could be tested in a financial sandbox, then evolved it into a real, scalable product ready for market.
- Role
- Head of Design Strategy
- Capabilities
- Product Strategy · Behavioral Design · Strategic Research · UX Strategy
01CONTEXT
A good idea that had not yet become a product.
Pensumo already existed when it arrived at Ibercaja, but after several years it remained at a very early stage.
The bank saw a clear fit with one of its strengths: long-term saving and preparing for retirement.
But before considering scale, we had to demonstrate that a different financial mechanism —where third parties could make contributions derived from spending— could work technically, operationally and within regulation.
02SANDBOX
We could not yet design the definitive product. We had to design the right version for learning.
The sandbox timetable left barely seven weeks to make Pensumo ready for testing.
We prioritised the foundations: value proposition, architecture, essential functionality and an experience complete enough to operate as an MVP.
We rethought the UX/UI, refreshed the identity and developed an initial strategic direction:
Research had to be deliberately lightweight: pension experts, Ibercaja teams, existing product knowledge and focused validation with users.
The aim was not to solve Pensumo completely. It was to build what was needed to prove it could exist.
Connect how you live today with how you want to live tomorrow.
03VALIDATION
The first phase proved Pensumo could exist. The second had to make people want to use it.
The sandbox primarily validated the technical and regulatory viability of a novel financial mechanism.
But it also reinforced an opportunity that was already emerging strongly:
Saving creates friction.
It usually means setting aside money today that can no longer be used, in exchange for a benefit many years in the future.
Pensumo could begin somewhere else: building an initial base of savings through behaviours that already existed.
PHASE 1
CAN IT EXIST?
TECHNICAL · OPERATIONAL · REGULATORY VIABILITY
PHASE 2
CAN IT BECOME A DESIRABLE, SCALABLE PRODUCT?
PRODUCT · EXPERIENCE · MARKET
04THE BARRIER
Saving often feels like giving something up today to gain something tomorrow.
The challenge was not only to explain a pension plan more clearly.
Retirement feels too far away precisely during the years when starting to save can have the greatest impact. For many people, retirement saving is not yet part of their mental model.
Pensumo could reduce that initial barrier.
It was not intended to replace voluntary saving, but to make it easier to begin.
TODAY
AVAILABLE MONEY · SPENDING · GRATIFICATION
TOMORROW
SAVING · RETIREMENT · DISTANT BENEFIT
Cashback was not the product. It was the gateway to the habit of saving.
05RESEARCH THROUGH PROTOTYPING
The prototype was not the solution we wanted to validate. It was the tool we wanted to research with.
When Pensumo returned to become a market product, we needed to learn much more.
We worked through research through prototyping: building hypotheses about architecture, functionality and interaction, then using them as stimuli in interviews and tests.
It did not matter if the prototype contained friction. That friction was precisely what enabled us to investigate.
The aim was not merely to ask whether an interface worked, but to understand how people thought about saving, spending, retirement and financial behaviour.
The learning fed new iterations, functionality and the roadmap.
RESEARCH THROUGH PROTOTYPING ≠ CONVENTIONAL USABILITY TESTING
06LIFESTYLE
Saving had to adapt to people’s lifestyles, not ask people to adapt their lives to saving.
INSIDE THE BANK
- SAVING
- RETIREMENT
- PENSION PLAN
IN PEOPLE’S LIVES
- WHERE I SHOP
- WHAT I DO
- WHAT I LIKE
- HOW I WANT TO KEEP LIVING
Internally, we talked about financial products and retirement.
But people talk about how they want to live.
Archetypes, journeys and empathy maps showed that Pensumo needed to connect with each user’s everyday habits: where they shop, what they consume and what forms part of their lifestyle.
We could not expect someone to change where they shopped in order to save.
We had to make sure they could find their everyday life within Pensumo.
The proposition communicated by the product today retains that logic: growing savings through everyday purchases without changing habits.
07BEHAVIORAL DESIGN
Offering saving mechanisms was not enough. We had to choose when to activate them.
We designed the moments when a person might be most receptive to taking the next step.
- Everyday behaviour↓→
- reward↓→
- visible progress↓→
- next small action↓→
- habit
Make progress visible
Show how much they were saving and how it changed over time.
Use the right moment
Use milestones such as the monthly summary to suggest a one-off or regular contribution when the value of saving was already visible.
Begin with existing habits
Help people find merchants relevant to their individual lifestyle.
Introduce small accelerators
Round-ups, challenges, rewards and personal contributions that could progressively grow their savings.
08ECOSYSTEM
To work, Pensumo had to create value for people, merchants and Ibercaja.
People
An accessible way to begin building savings without radically changing their habits.
Ibercaja
A new gateway to retirement saving, and also a way to connect people, merchants and financial services within one ecosystem.
Research with merchants was still exploratory, but it revealed a second value proposition and a territory with potential for further development.
Merchants
An opportunity to turn a commercial reward into something more meaningful: contributing to a customer’s financial future.
09OUTCOME
Pensumo went from regulated experiment to real product.
The second phase became a product that was developed, launched and remains active in the market.
Today, Pensumo allows contributions from purchases at participating merchants to accumulate in a pension plan, even when using linked cards from other banks.
According to figures reported by Pensumo in 2026, the service has exceeded 100,000 downloads and includes nearly 500 merchants and services. The company also states that the model is helping to bring forward the average age of taking out a pension plan by between 10 and 15 years.
Beyond the figures, the most relevant result is that a proposition that had struggled to gain traction for years became a genuine innovation commitment within Ibercaja and a service that continues to evolve in the market.
10MY ROLE
Head of Design Strategy
I led Pensumo from defining an MVP capable of entering the sandbox through to the strategic and research direction of its evolution into a market product.
In the first phase, I worked on framing, conceptualisation, the value proposition and MVP prioritisation, took part in research and led the narrative for senior leadership, while overseeing the experience and interface direction.
In the second, I drove and championed the research through prototyping approach, coordinated research and design, led insight extraction and turned those learnings into a strategic direction that could be defended before Ibercaja’s senior leadership.
Key responsibilities
Strategic framing
Product strategy
Research direction
Research through prototyping
Behavioral design
Sensemaking
UX direction
Executive storytelling
Team
The team evolved with the project: from a compact sandbox team to parallel UX Research teams, two UI Specialists, a UX Writer and Project Management during the product phase.
11REFLECTION
Design can also help build habits that improve our long-term decisions.
Pensumo confirmed for me that design is not only about making a single action easier.
We can also create the conditions for small behaviours to be repeated, take hold and progressively move people closer to goals that would otherwise feel too distant.
The project also reinforced the value of research through prototyping. When working with concepts that do not yet exist in the market, making them tangible allows us to investigate something concrete without waiting for a finished solution.
Designing a behaviour does not mean telling someone what to do. It means creating the conditions that make doing what benefits them progressively easier.