What happens when a 245-year-old financial institution needs to go fully digital - fast? This is the story of how we designed NMP's first mobile app from the ground up, giving customers control over their pawn tickets for the first time.
Overview
Nacional Monte de Piedad's customers had always managed their pawn tickets in person. No app, no online payments, no self-service — everything required a branch visit. When the pandemic hit, that model broke overnight.
Our challenge was clear: design a mobile app that gave frequent pawning customers full visibility and control over their tickets, while introducing digital payments and cross-selling opportunities, all built on a design system we had already established.
Process
01 — Audit & Discovery We started by evaluating the existing app state, the goals we were pursuing, and the digital foundations we had already built on the web. This gave us a clear baseline — and a list of gaps to close.
02 — Design & Build Using the existing design system, we redesigned the app's visual language and progressively introduced new functionalities — starting with information-first features and moving toward fully transactional ones. The app was built to feel familiar but modern, trustworthy but approachable.
Key features we designed: 🎯 Pawn simulator with personalized results 🎫 Full ticket visibility — status, tracking, and expiration alerts 💳 Digital payment methods 🏆 Customer loyalty level and benefits 📢 Promotions and cross-sell module ⚙️ Self-management: password recovery, profile, settings
03 — Beta Testing Before launch, we recruited real customers as beta users — people with active pawn tickets who could stress-test the experience with genuine stakes. We defined 11 key user journeys to test, covering everything from login and password recovery to ticket management and payments.
Beta users were selected based on: active ticket ownership, willingness to share detailed feedback, and ability to describe issues clearly enough for developers to reproduce them.
Impact
✅ Customers can now manage and pay for their tickets entirely from their phones ✅ First time online payments were possible at NMP — a major milestone for the institution ✅ Reduced dependency on branch visits, especially critical during the pandemic ✅ Gave customers a direct, always-on channel to interact with the brand on their own terms
Final thoughts
This app marked Nacional Monte de Piedad's first fully transactional mobile experience. Launching during the COVID-19 pandemic, it enabled customers to view ticket status, simulate pawn values, and make payments remotely for the first time, a critical capability when branches faced mandatory closure restrictions. The project established the design system foundation used across all subsequent digital products at the institution.
