Cartes Bancaires
A voice and visual solution allowing people with severe physical disabilities to pay in stores in a secure and autonomous way.
What was the purpose of this project?
In our fourth year at Hetic, we had to carry out an educational project with a partner company. With a fellow student, we chose to work for Cartes Bancaires. The company was asking for the investment of several teams of designers from the class to find solutions to improve the accessibility of online or offline payment for people whose disability complicates this action. The subject was rather complex, but extremely challenging.
Which solution to implement?
For several months, we interviewed many people to develop our empathy: associations on disability, people with disabilities, and so on. From these interviews, we created personas and experience maps. At the same time, we met regularly with the CB teams to communicate our progress and get their feedback. After many iterations, we were able to propose an innovative solution.
A voice and visual application allowing people with severe physical disabilities to pay in stores in a secure and autonomous way.
This solution is the result of several observations. Firstly, it is difficult for a person with a physical handicap to take their bank card out of their bag. Moreover, it is almost impossible to type the code on the Eftpos terminals, which are often out of reach when you are in a wheelchair. Secondly, saying one's bank card code out loud to a third party causes serious confidentiality problems and finally, a large number of disabled people are used to using voice technology to control their telephone. In order to deploy this service efficiently, we envisaged that it would become an addition to the Paylib system belonging to CB and already present on the applications of the majority of French banks. We made sure that our service could be entirely controlled by voice, but also in a classic way using one's phone in order to adapt to all types of disabilities. To illustrate how it works, we will see two different use cases.
First use case
Adrien is quadriplegic, he no longer has the use of his arms and uses our service to pay in store. The application allows him to pay by voice without using the terminal, which is not adapted to his disability. To begin with, Adrien authenticates himself with his voice password before arriving at the store to unlock his account.
After choosing his products, Adrien arrives at the checkout and tells the merchant that he wants to pay with Paylib Access. The merchant provides him with the unique Paylib code generated by the cashier and Adrien says it to his voice assistant.
Adrien checks the purchase information and confirms the purchase.
Second use case
Manuel is paraplegic, still has the use of his arms and uses the Paylib application to pay in a store. The application allows him to validate the payment with his fingers without using the payment terminal which is out of reach. Manuel goes to the nearest Franprix store. After choosing his products, Manuel arrives at the checkout and tells the shopkeeper that he wants to pay with Paylib Access. The shopkeeper provides him with the unique code generated by the cashier and Manuel enters this identifier on the Paylib application.
Manuel checks the purchase information and confirms the purchase with FaceID.
Special cases
The proper functioning of the application depends on the user's internet connection. However, it often happens that the connection is poor in some shops. So an alternative had to be found. In this case, the user has to provide his Paylib Access ID to the merchant and the latter will send him a request that the user will have to validate later or else he will be banned from the service.
What is the outcome of this project?
To be sure that this solution brings a real help to disabled people, we had the opportunity to make a voice prototype and to have it tested by disabled people. We also presented our solution to the head of Cartes Bancaires at the end of the project and the feedback was very positive. This project taught me a lot and allowed me to cultivate my empathy.