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Purrweb was approached by a client who often goes to Montenegro for business. Once, it dawned on him — there is a vacant business niche in this Balkan country, and why not occupy it with his startup? This is how the client invented Together — an app for quick and convenient online payments.
Because Montenegro has a problem with this, imagine a typical situation: in restaurants, people tip in cash, and tourists can’t pay with a card. They have to take cash everywhere and exchange it at a favorable rate. Moreover, it’s difficult for the locals to transfer money to each other.
Initially, it was just about tipping and paying for services with a QR code. Later, the client realized that Together could address several user pains. The idea outgrew itself, and we started developing a real ecosystem!
In this case, we’ll tell you how to combine the end-user benefit with business interests seamlessly and why we haven’t released the app, although it’s almost ready.
How the client came up with the idea for the app
In December 2022, Vitaly and Igor turned to us. Vitaly is a financial consultant and lives in RSA, whereas Igor is his business partner from Montenegro and has been in the restaurant business for a long time. For this project, the client also attracted Svyatoslav — Vitaly’s partner in external relations — and Sergey — the platform administrator responsible for the further development of the service.
The clients created a startup called Together and asked us to design and develop a mobile app. The idea for the project emerged from their personal observations of everyday and business life in Montenegro.
Mobile banking and cashless payments are poorly developed here. And in general, modern financial tools are far less accessible here than they are in Europe.
It’s hard for us modern people to imagine this. We tip with QR codes and pay online for everything we can — from utilities to streaming subscriptions.
In Montenegro, the situation with online payments remains at the level of 2010. 🙃 Mobile banking? Well, you can walk to the nearest bank office. What about paying with a QR code? But I have cash. Maybe you want to use a credit card? Alas, there is no payment terminal.
Jokes aside, this all is very inconvenient.
It’s not just about everyday availability but also limitations for small businesses and service sector specialists. For example, not all businesses or self-employed specialists can afford a payment terminal to let customers pay via a bank card. Self-employed people, by the way, make up 21% of Montenegro’s working population, according to the data for 2022.
In this situation, our clients saw a huge business potential and an opportunity to create a product that would meet the everyday needs of thousands of customers.
Finally, it’s a win-win situation: the Montenegrins get a cool financial tool for instant cashless payments, and our clients enjoy profit from transaction fees.
Together: who this product is for and how it works
When the clients first came to us, the idea was the following. They wanted to make an app for waiters and people who work in the service industry — hairdressers and owners of small or medium-sized businesses.
With the help of Together, they will be able to get tips and payments via QR codes. They won’t have to install expensive equipment or ask clients to pay in cash.
Among analogs, there are EasyTip and TackPay. But there is nothing like this in Montenegro, so our clients became pioneers!
And Together works like this — we will explain using the example of tipping in a restaurant:
The app fulfills multiple tasks for different sides. A business can:
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- offer customers a simple and convenient cashless payment method;
- monitor all the receipts in a single place;
- transfer all the money to a card.
And users can not only pay tips with the app but also transfer and receive money.
Our clients decided to engage an outsourcing team for design and development. It was important to them that the product would be developed by professionals who would understand the task, offer their solutions, and take full responsibility for project management.
They were attracted by our structured approach to estimating and high level of involvement already at the negotiation stage. They did not hesitate to start working with us.
We planned to create the app’s MVP with basic features to release the product as soon as possible and get feedback from real users. But everything turned out completely different.
Our tasks
In this project, we needed to do the following:
| Purrweb’s case ⭐
👉 By the way, at the same time as Together, we worked on another project that was similar in spirit and features — the KEM mobile app for exchanging money between users. It’s aimed at the Kuwaiti market and helps solve a similar problem with access to online banking. In this case, we demonstrated how KEM works and shared our clients’ success story. Now, more than 100,000 people use this app, and the clients attracted $1 million in investments in the first stage. |
But let’s get back to Together 🙂
Vitaly, Igor, and Svyatoslav — the product owners — planned to start in Montenegro and see if the product would rocket. Then, they’ll scale and get to the markets of Serbia, RSA, and Dubai. These countries have the same problem: many people working in the service sector can’t receive cashless payments, control their incomes, or withdraw money.
It took us almost 10 months to design and develop this app, although we usually make an app in about 6 months. The thing is that during the development of the key features, the clients reconsidered the idea of the product and decided to turn it into something bigger than just an online payment tool.
This increased the project’s scale and development time. Besides, we helped our clients prepare promo materials. But first things first — let’s see how Together works and what it looks like, and break down the main flows.
👉 If you want to develop and launch your own app for financial transactions, read our detailed guide. There, we explained the app types, as well as discussed legal aspects and necessary features.
The main user flows and design of the app
One of the client’s key design requirements was that the app had to be colorful and positive. Also, they wanted it to stand out among the typical banking apps with its strict and discreet design and minimalist color palette.
We liked this approach — going beyond the stereotype that a financial app’s color palette must have only two shades and no bright accents.
Our clients considered the white and blue banking apps boring. But they also didn’t like overly bright — acid — shades. At the same time, the warm pastel shades were exactly what they needed. That’s why we used them in the design.
The main flow of the app is as follows:
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- a user signs up or logs in
- they generate a QR code
- a user can create up to three different QR codes to filter income from different types of work
- shows a QR code on the app screen to receive tips or payments
- can transfer money right in the app
- can withdraw money to another account
The first step is signing up. It’s a standard thing: to start using Together, a user has to go through a few required steps.
The first code is created automatically. If a user needs additional codes, they can be generated in a few taps. It’s enough just to open the “QR codes” tab in the tab bar and tap “Add code.” In the window that appears, users enter their name, business type, and other required information.
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The flow of creating a new QR code |
Printing a QR code is another useful feature. The app automatically creates templates that users can download and use.
A user will get a real business card with the name, position, QR code, and payment methods of the customers
Financial management is displayed on the profile page. From here, users can go to the withdrawal flow, transfers, and transaction history.
A profile page
Transaction history displays summary statistics that users can customize — select the desired time and filter income by specific sources.
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How to view transaction history |
Also, a user can transfer money to another Together user. It’s straightforward: a user just enters the transfer sum, their nickname, and the verification code, which will be sent via SMS or email.
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You can transfer money to another user just by entering their nickname |
We aimed to create a light and bright app with a unique style. We understood that the app had many features and did everything to make the user experience intuitive and natural. And we succeeded.
The client was pleased with the result: the app turned out to be unique and fresh. Besides, he came up with an interesting idea — push notifications with motivational quotes from celebrities that users can view in the app. No other app has anything like this!
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts,” said Winston Churchill. This quote describes some of our projects very well 🙂
Why limit the potential of your product? Let’s make it an ecosystem!
While working on the project, the clients reconsidered the product concept. They understood that Together could become something more than just a cashless payment app.
For example, online headhunting isn’t very common in Montenegro. People prefer to hire people they know or rely on word of mouth. But these methods aren’t very efficient.
That’s why the client saw an interesting opportunity: what if Together also turned into a platform for placing CVs and job offers?
The mechanics are similar to many popular headhunting platforms: employers post job offers, and then users respond to them and attach their CVs. The new jobs are displayed in the feed.
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This is how a user can upload a CV, find a suitable offer, and apply |
But that’s not all! The app has an additional feature — a marketplace where small and medium businesses, as well as single sellers, can post products for sale and advertise their shops. The marketplace idea emerged because the retail industry in Montenegro is mainly offline, and the e-commerce sector isn’t developed.
Also, Together has a referral program for users. A user can invite a friend to the app and get bonus points that can be converted into money later. Besides, it allows users to customize QR codes or the design of the physical payment card… wait, a physical payment card?
Our clients have huge plans — they want the Together brand to issue their own payment cards that will be used instead of bank cards.
We made bright patterns for the card design — a user can select one from a few available designs or use regular colors or gradients
The Together app had to turn into a true ecosystem. If initially, it solved one minor task for a specific audience — waiters and self-employed specialists in various small business sectors, the clients later saw an absolutely different potential.
Together can solve many more tasks for hundreds of users: financial management, money transactions, job hunting, and business advertising.
The main task that remained was to integrate the payment system into the app. We planned to use Stripe since we often choose it when we make products for the foreign market. We thought that there would be no problems with the integration of the payment system. But unexpected difficulties still came.
Dollars or Euros? How we searched for a suitable payment system
Fun fact: The Montenegrins often use euros as a currency unofficially. No wonder that the country is not in the eurozone. And there is no national currency in Montenegro — that’s just the way it is.
At the development stage, we understood that we could face the problem of double conversion — our backend was adapted for euros. Still, the Stripe account, which was integrated in the app, can be used in other currencies.
For example, if a user has a Stripe account in dollars, euros are first converted to dollars and then back to euros. And all this is done to transfer money to a user in Together.
When a client pays via their Stripe dollar account, the system converts euros to dollars for payment processing. Then, it converts dollars back to euros to send money to the Together user with a euro account.
The double conversion could result in sum changes caused by exchange rate fluctuations. This meant losses for users, especially if the rates changed not in their favor and right during the conversion process.
Of course, this was not good. For a long time, we tried to change the situation on the database side of the app. But finally, we decided to find another payment system that uses euros for all the operations.
And this is where our headache started. It turned out that many payment systems can’t work in Montenegro due to legal aspects related to the fact that Montenegro is not officially in the eurozone. We turned to the support services of PayPal, WSPay Payments, and many other platforms.
Help PayPal find Montenegro on the map
Sometime later, we found a suitable tool — the KOMMERCE PAY payment system, which was ready to work in Montenegro.
We have already started integrating their system, but we had to stop. The owners told us that they needed to develop a custom platform for Montenegro. And this would take only half a year.
And this didn’t satisfy either us or the client at all. Still, to save time and money, we were looking for a ready-made solution that wouldn’t have to be made from scratch.
After weighing the pros and cons, we decided to return to Stripe. We just enhanced the features to avoid problems with currency conversion.
How we made a pitch deck for investors and a cool promo video
We often help our clients to create marketing materials, whether it be sales landing pages, like in the case with MyWard — the app for a virtual wardrobe, or promo videos, like for Buy My Brains — the intellectual property marketplace.
Our clients asked us to make a pitch deck for investors. They wanted it to be something bright and unique — to match the app design. That’s why we combined figures and important business aspects with friendly animations.
A few slides from the pitch deck, where we reveal the users’ problems the app solves, as well as highlight the app’s value and market potential 👇
Animations in the pitch deck aren’t just pictures. They create images of users, thus helping to see what potential users can look like and convey the important aspects of their experience with the app.
One of the animations we made for the pitch deck
However, perhaps creating a promo video was one of the most creative and interesting tasks in the project — the client planned to show it at the very beginning of the presentation.
The clients wanted the app’s values to be shown in a simple and engaging form. These values are represented in the product’s slogan: If you wanna go far — go together. 😀
We wrote a script for the video, worked out the style and the app design, and came up with the entire visual concept. Once we agreed on everything with the clients, we made animations and edited the video.
And this is how our designer worked on the animation of the characters.
Here’s the result
The characters travel to the capitals of the countries where our clients want to promote the app. Finally, they reached Dubai! Why? Because they traveled together and helped each other overcome the challenges.
98% ready for the release
The app is almost ready — all we had to do was to finish the payment feature. But we have to postpone the release. The client had to deal with some formal issues to make posting in all the stores flawless.
That’s why we paused the project, but we still stayed in touch with the client. We are ready to go and release Together.
The finished screens for the stores rest in Figma, waiting for their turn
We’re sure that soon you’ll spot this app, and in Montenegro, you’ll be able to easily pay in cafes and local souvenir shops simply by scanning a QR code. There won’t be a need to search for a place to exchange euros or take cash everywhere🙂
➡️ Do you have an idea for a digital product? Are you looking for a design and development team that would be able to release it? We at Purrweb are ready to help. Specify the business task and a problem for the end user, and we will find the best solution.
If along the way, you realize that the concept has changed, we will flexibly adapt and keep moving forward. Contact us, and we’ll discuss your task as well as outline the deadlines and the budget.
