Customer Success Stories
PagoFX: Helping Santander Build a Digital Business
From prototype to a licensed, globally rolled out payments product — in under 18 months
The Challenge
Sending money overseas is a painful experience. No clear verification. No confirmation the funds arrived. And you pay for the privilege.
Santander saw the gap. As part of its four-year, €20 billion digital transformation programme, the bank set out to build PagoFX: a standalone international money transfer app combining the trust and security of a global bank with the single-minded customer focus of an industry disruptor.
Red Badger's job was to validate the assumptions — the real customer problems, the problems worth solving first — and then design, build and launch the service.
Our approach
Get out of the building and speak to customers
Before any concrete decisions, we collected real customer feedback across Europe. Hidden fees, long delivery times and poor payment visibility came up again and again. That crystallised the problems to solve — and for whom.
User onboarding came first. Working with business, legal and tech teams, we created a journey that delivered the security customers demanded, including the full Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process.
Start-up thinking inside a global bank
The PagoFX team operated independently of the wider bank, with the autonomy to make product and technology decisions and experiment safely in isolation. To accelerate time to market, the minimum desirable product used third-party services for key functionality, with a longer-term strategy to migrate onto Santander platforms.
The team set an ambitious goal: make an international payment from the app within four months. That meant new cloud infrastructure, the iOS app, the payments platform behind it, and third-party integrations — all in parallel. The team hit the goal on time.
Building a licensed payment provider
Santander established a separate legal entity and applied for payments licenses with UK and EU regulators. Red Badger provided technology support covering cloud architecture, processing of sensitive information and information security controls.
Scaling delivery
The pilot's success pushed the project to a full UK launch, then the EU. The engagement grew to four parallel Red Badger teams, delivering:
- The Android application — a key platform to reach EU customers
- A staff-facing customer and payment operations portal — enabling operators to monitor onboarding, payments and potential financial crime
- The accounting ledger system — tracking precise movements of funds during payment processing
Throughout, regular lab-style usability testing kept the product honest — building user empathy across stakeholders and the team.
The results
In under 18 months, Red Badger helped PagoFX go from prototype to a globally rolled out product. PagoFX launched in the UK with a 4.9-star App Store rating, a payments platform enabling customers to send money abroad quickly and safely, and a team able to operate and scale the service independently into new markets.
Not a project. A sustainable digital business.
Key takeaways
- Speed in a regulated sector is possible. First live international payment from the app within four months — including KYC, FX hedging and settlement.
- Validate before you build. Customer research across Europe defined which problems to solve first, and the minimum desirable product proved them.
- Autonomy accelerates. A start-up-style team operating independently inside Santander made product and technology decisions without bank-scale bureaucracy.
- Architecture for the long term. Third-party services for speed now, a clear migration path to Santander platforms later.
- Built to hand over. PagoFX's own team can operate, scale and expand the product — the true measure of a transformation partner.
PagoFX combines the best of both worlds: the trust and security of a large bank with the single-minded customer focus of an industry disruptor. — The PagoFX product vision
Red Badger is the product transformation consultancy for blue chips. Our product design capabilities and technical pedigree build high-performance digital platforms that get you closer to your customers and embed new ways of working. Your journey to an agile, innovative digital product organisation starts today.
