Case file 027Fintech2026

Pebble savings app: product design and developmentSaving that feels like texting a friend.

Pebble wanted first-time savers to stop thinking about saving at all. We designed and built an app that rounds up every purchase, sets goals in plain words and celebrates every milestone.

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Overview

Total saved

£2,480.50

This month

£312.40

Goal

68%

Saved per month

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAug

Recent

Coffee round-up+£0.60

Weekly auto-save+£25.00

Groceries round-up+£0.35

Savings growth

+212%

since you joined

JanAug

Good morning

Hi, Aisha

Total saved

£2,480.50

£84 this week

Lisbon in May68%

Recent

Coffee round-up+£0.60
Weekly auto-save+£25.00
Groceries round-up+£0.35

Milestone reached

£2,000 saved for Lisbon

Round-up +£0.60

Client: Pebble Money Ltd
Sector: Consumer fintech
Scope: Product design, iOS, Android, API
Timeline: 7 months

Outcomes

Full results

More savers still saving at week 12: 3.4×
More saved per user by month 6: 3.2×
Fewer quit after a missed week: 48%

The challenge

Why savers gave up on the old Pebble

Pebble had plenty of sign-ups, but 71% of them stopped saving within three weeks. Twenty-four interviews showed us four reasons why.

See how we solved it

Saving relied on memory01 / 04

Key finding

23 days

average gap between transfers

Transfers per user, by month

Month 1Month 6

“I always meant to move money. Then payday came and went.”
Saver, 29, research interview

Every transfer had to be started by hand, so saving only happened on the days people remembered, which was rarely.
- Transfers only happened on payday, if at all
- No automatic rules or round-ups
- Saving depended on willpower, not design
Saving relied on memory01 / 04
Key finding
23 days
average gap between transfers
Transfers per user, by month
4
3
3
2
1
1
Month 1Month 6
“I always meant to move money. Then payday came and went.”
Saver, 29, research interview
Goals were a target amount and a date in a form. Savers called it “a spreadsheet with a logo” and stopped opening it.
- Goals were just a target amount and a date
- No sense of what the money was for
- Weekly amounts left for users to work out
Goals felt like homework02 / 04
Key finding
4 fields
to fill in before saving a penny
Goals still active, by month
9
7
5
4
3
2
Month 1Month 6
“Setting a goal felt like doing my taxes.”
Saver, 34, research interview
The balance sat three taps deep. With nothing to see day to day, saving never felt like it was going anywhere.
- Balance hidden three taps deep
- No daily sign of progress
- Milestones passed without notice
Progress was invisible03 / 04
Key finding
3 taps
to see your balance
Daily app opens per user
8
7
5
4
3
2
Week 1Week 6
“I never knew if I was getting anywhere.”
Saver, 31, research interview
Reminders read like warnings. One missed week turned into guilt, and guilt turned into deleting the app.
- Reminders worded like overdue notices
- No way to pause or skip a week
- Guilt led to uninstalls, not saving
Missing a week felt like failing04 / 04
Key finding
1 in 4
uninstalled after a missed-saving reminder
Uninstalls after reminders
2
3
4
6
7
9
Week 1Week 6
“The app made me feel bad, so I deleted it.”
Saver, 26, research interview

The solution

We took the effort out of saving

Four habits made saving hard. We replaced each one with something that happens on its own, in a savings app for iOS and Android.

Rounded up this month

£31.20

from 46 card payments

Today

Flat whiteMonmouth Coffee£3.40+£0.60
GroceriesSainsbury's£23.65+£0.35
Bus fareTfL£1.75+£0.25
LunchPret£6.20+£0.80

9:41
Good morning
Aisha
A
Rounded up this month
£31.20
from 46 card payments
Today
Flat whiteMonmouth Coffee£3.40+£0.60
GroceriesSainsbury's£23.65+£0.35
Bus fareTfL£1.75+£0.25
LunchPret£6.20+£0.80
HomeGoalsSavingsMe
Every purchase rounds up automatically
New goal
I'm saving for…
Lisbon in May
By when?
MarchAprilMayJune
Target
£1,200
Pebble suggests
£17 a week
Round-ups cover about £7 of it
Start saving
Goals in plain words, like “Lisbon in May”
68%to Lisbon
Saved so far
£816
£6.40 today
This week
£32.40
MTWTFSS
Weekly auto-save+£17.00
A live progress ring on the home screen
Halfway to Lisbon!
You've saved £600. Nice one.
3 of 6 milestones
ShareKeep going
Every milestone celebrated, however small

Swipe to see each screen

Before: Saving meant remembering to move money
After: Every purchase rounds up automatically
Spare change from every card payment moves to savings, with no thought required. Savers choose a multiplier, and Pebble pauses round-ups by itself when their balance runs low, so saving never leaves them short.
How we built it
- Card payments read through Open Banking, matched to round-ups within a minute
- Round-ups gathered into one daily transfer, not dozens of tiny ones
Result+£31 / month
Before: Goals were numbers in a spreadsheet
After: Goals in plain words, like “Lisbon in May”
Name what you're saving for and when, and Pebble works out the weekly amount. If a week falls short, the plan quietly spreads the gap over the weeks left instead of asking for it all at once.
How we built it
- A goal set in one sentence, with the date read from the words
- Weekly targets recalculated after every deposit
Result2× goals kept
Before: Progress was invisible until payday
After: A live progress ring on the home screen
The first thing you see is how close you are, updated with every round-up. Small, frequent movement made progress feel real, and opening the app turned into a quick daily habit instead of a monthly chore.
How we built it
- One progress ring for the main goal, above everything else
- A home-screen widget for iOS and Android, so progress shows without opening the app
ResultDaily check-ins
Before: Missing a week felt like failing
After: Every milestone celebrated, however small
Small wins arrive as small celebrations, so saving feels good instead of guilty. A missed week gets a friendly nudge with a smaller amount to catch up, never a red warning or a broken streak.
How we built it
- Milestones at every 10% of a goal, each with its own celebration
- Streaks that bend: one missed week a month doesn't reset them
Result−48% drop-off

Also in the app

Open Banking
Connect any UK bank in under a minute, read-only, through TrueLayer.
Smart pause
Round-ups stop by themselves when the balance drops below a floor the saver sets.
Secure by default
Face ID or fingerprint to open, and every account detail encrypted.
Gentle nudges
Reminders written and tested with savers: friendly, never a warning.
Milestones
Every 10% of a goal gets its own small celebration.

How we worked

One team, seven months, a release every two weeks

A dedicated team in Zirakpur worked with Pebble's product lead in London. Pebble saw working software every Friday and could change direction any week.

Timeline

30 weeks in all

1Discover
4 weeks
24 saver interviews, funnel and churn analysis
2Design
6 weeks
Flows and 142 screens, tested with 12 savers
3Build
16 weeks
Flutter app, round-ups API and Open Banking
4Launch
4 weeks
Staged rollout, store release and monitoring

The team · 10 people

Product lead1
Product designers2
Flutter engineers3
Backend engineers2
QA engineer1
DevOps engineer1

Working together

Demo: Every Friday
Overlap with London: 4 hours a day
Releases: Every two weeks
Shared tools: Slack, Jira, Figma

The stack

Flutter · Dart · Node.js · PostgreSQL · TrueLayer · AWS · Firebase

The results

Savers who stay and savings that grow

Twelve weeks after the relaunch, three times as many people were still saving, and each of them was saving more.

Headline result

Week 12

3.4×

more savers still saving at week 12

Of every 10 sign-ups, still saving

Old app2/10

Pebble7/10

Share of sign-ups still saving

Week	Old app	Pebble	Gap
Week 1	58%	88%	+30 pts
Week 3	29%	79%	+50 pts
Week 6	24%	72%	+48 pts
Week 12	20%	67%	+47 pts

saved per user in month 6, 3.2× the old appOld app £30 → Pebble £96: £96
as many goals kept to their dateOld app 31% → Pebble 64%: 2×
fewer quit within a week of missing oneOld app 46% → Pebble 24%: −48%

Measured across 18,400 sign-ups, March – June 2026. Compared with the same months in the year before the relaunch, using the same definition of an active saver: at least one deposit in the week.

Built with

The services behind these results. Each one you can start with on its own.

All services

In their words

They didn't just build what we asked for. They found out why our savers were leaving, and built the app that made them stay.

MOMaya OkaforHead of Product, Pebble Money Ltd

Pebble Money Ltd

Consumer fintech · London

Worked together: 7 months
Releases since launch: 14
Still working together: Yes, on v2

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Pebble savings app: product design and developmentSaving that feels like texting a friend.

Why savers gave up on the old Pebble

Saving relied on memory

Goals felt like homework

Progress was invisible

Missing a week felt like failing

We took the effort out of saving

After: Every purchase rounds up automatically

After: Goals in plain words, like “Lisbon in May”

After: A live progress ring on the home screen

After: Every milestone celebrated, however small