Portfolio
BankMyPals
BankMyPals was a native mobile referral platform that turned satisfied customers into brand ambassadors, connecting contact-based recommendations, lead tracking and PayPal rewards in one product.
Overview
BankMyPals was a mobile referral platform created for Career Insights. Its purpose was simple: help satisfied customers recommend the company’s services to people they already knew, follow those introductions through the sales process and receive a financial reward when a referral converted.
Behind that simple proposition was a multi-part digital product. BankMyPals connected native mobile experiences, phone contacts, a backend platform, CRM workflows, referral statuses and payment functionality. DigitalTouch designed and developed the product across mobile, web and server-side components.
The website and mobile applications are no longer active. This case documents the historical product using the surviving project materials and contemporary launch coverage from 2015.
Turning word of mouth into a measurable workflow
Personal recommendations are valuable because they begin with trust, but they are difficult for a business to manage at scale. Informal introductions can be lost, referrers may not know what happened next and reward administration can become manual and opaque.
BankMyPals turned that informal process into a visible product journey:
- A customer selected potentially interested people from their phone contacts.
- The referrals entered the company’s sales workflow.
- The referrer could monitor each contact’s progress through the pipeline.
- A successful conversion generated a reward balance.
- Available funds could be transferred to the user’s PayPal account.
This closed the gap between recommendation, sales follow-up and incentive payment. Users were not simply asked to submit names and wait; they could see that their referrals were moving through a real process.
A native mobile experience built around contacts
The smartphone was central to the product concept because a user’s existing contacts represented the natural starting point for a trusted introduction. BankMyPals integrated with the device contact list so referrals could be created without manually retyping every person’s details.
DigitalTouch developed separate native applications for Android and iOS. This approach allowed the product to work closely with platform conventions and device capabilities while delivering an experience tailored to each operating system.
The precise native programming languages are not listed in the surviving documentation, so the case does not retroactively assign Java, Kotlin, Objective-C or Swift. What is confirmed is the native implementation strategy rather than a cross-platform mobile framework.
Making the reward model transparent
An incentive platform succeeds only when users understand what they can earn and trust the status displayed in the app. BankMyPals therefore made the reward journey visible rather than treating payment as a back-office detail.
For the Career Insights launch, contemporary materials advertised a £50 payment for every successful referral. Users could review referral progress, see when a conversion qualified and transfer bankable funds through PayPal.
The interface combined friendly visual design and dynamic infographics with practical status information. That balance helped the product feel motivating while keeping the rules and progress of the referral journey understandable.
Connecting referrals to the sales team
Capturing a contact was only the first step. For BankMyPals to create business value, submitted referrals needed to reach the people responsible for qualification and conversion.
Salesforce integration connected the mobile referral journey with the client’s CRM workflow. New leads could be followed up by the sales team, while changes in the pipeline could be reflected back to the referrer through the product experience.
This integration was a defining part of the solution. BankMyPals was not just a branded contact form packaged as an app; it connected customer advocacy with an operational sales process.
Backend, payments and communication
A PHP and MySQL backend supported the product’s accounts, referrals, statuses and reward logic. The backend coordinated information exchanged between the native applications and external services.
PayPal provided the reward withdrawal channel, Salesforce supported lead management and SendGrid was part of the recorded communication stack. These integrations created a connected lifecycle from referral submission through sales activity to user notification and payment.
Because money and personal contact data were involved, the experience also needed clear state management. Users had to understand whether a lead was newly submitted, moving through the pipeline, successfully converted or eligible for withdrawal.
More than a one-off campaign
Although BankMyPals initially promoted the Career Insights e-learning platform, the product idea was broader than one campaign. Businesses could define their own referral fee and use branded visual material to encourage customers to participate.
That made the concept adaptable to service businesses where recommendations have meaningful value. The core model — activate existing customers, capture trusted leads, connect them to sales and reward successful outcomes — could be applied beyond the original education use case.
DigitalTouch’s role
DigitalTouch delivered BankMyPals as an integrated product engagement covering:
- UX and interface design;
- native Android application development;
- native iOS application development;
- backend and web delivery;
- contact-based referral workflows;
- Salesforce CRM integration;
- PayPal reward withdrawals;
- transactional communication infrastructure.
The project demonstrates DigitalTouch’s ability to connect consumer-facing mobile design with backend business logic and third-party operational systems. Instead of treating the app, CRM and payments as separate deliverables, the solution joined them into one referral lifecycle.
The challenge
Career Insights needed a referral product that made recommending its education services feel immediate and rewarding. The system had to capture trusted introductions from a user’s phone, pass qualified leads into the sales process, keep referrers informed and handle earned rewards with minimal friction.
What DigitalTouch built
DigitalTouch designed and developed the BankMyPals product across native Android and iOS applications, a supporting web presence and backend services. The experience covered contact-based referrals, lead status tracking, reward balances and PayPal withdrawals, with Salesforce integration connecting submitted leads to the client’s sales workflow.
Technical approach
Separate native mobile applications were created for Android and iOS rather than using a cross-platform framework. A PHP/MySQL backend supported product data and workflow logic, while Salesforce, PayPal and SendGrid handled CRM handoff, reward payments and transactional communication. The exact native programming languages are not published because they have not been independently confirmed.
DigitalTouch’s role
UX/UI, native mobile apps, web platform, backend and third-party integrations
Technologies
- Native Android
- Native iOS
- PHP
- MySQL
- WordPress
- Salesforce
- PayPal
- SendGrid
Outcome
BankMyPals launched on Android in 2015 and was used to promote the Career Insights e-learning platform. The published launch materials documented a £50 reward for each successful referral and real-time referral status tracking. The service and its mobile applications have since been discontinued.