Vipps started as a product from Norway’s largest bank, DNB, and was released to the market in May 2015. Norwegians quickly started to use the service on a daily basis, and came to love and cherish it. Vipps marked their territory and won the first market battle for smart payment solutions in Norway, in peer-to-peer payments. This gave them the opportunity to challenge all existing ways to collect, receive, sell and buy. Today Vipps is owned by over 130 Norwegian banks.

Many Norwegian banks wanted to be a part of Vipps, and Vipps wanted to be there for everyone, in order to make transactions easier and more available for us all. Growing in size and popularity, Vipps wanted to make some changes, and challenged us to work together with them in order to find the right direction. Vipps had to evolve from being all about peer-to-peer payments to taking a larger chunk of the payment-transaction market in general. By expanding the functionalities, and always aiming towards the main goal; to simplify payments for the users. Vipps are positioning themselves towards the international market, and go from being a service on the DNB product shelf to becoming an international competitor. Banks from all over the country decided to invest, but there was a minor challenge: the banks didn’t want to be associated with their competitor DNB, so Vipps had to make some changes and stand on their own. They had to build an independent brand and convey their own story, together with their new owners.

Vipps is a challenger to payments of every kind, so we helped them define their own category, «smart payments». Even though Vipps is known for payments and transfers, they didn’t fit in the same category as banking and finance. Together with the client, we worked with strategy and design simultaneously with weekly sprints. During the process we found that Vipps is like a caring and helpful friend making your life easier within the blink of an eye. This had to be reflected in the new Vipps identity and in the new and improved app. We have literally given Vipps a facelift. From a modest smile to a confident character with lots of emotions.

To get rid of the corporate jacket, we redesigned all the elements in their toolbox, and added a few more. The most important part was getting rid of the blue/green color adopted from, and highly associated with DNB. Vipps needed to stand out from traditional banks and payment services. The natural choice became to choose a brand color that was furthest away from the DNB sea-green. Orange was the perfect fit, symbolising the Vipps optimism and helpfulness, social skills and energy. Purple is all about their creativity, leadership and magical powers, while blue represents their trustworthiness.

We developed a type family custom made for Vipps. The family ‘Vipps Sans’ has quirky details combined with a solid and trustworthy look. he fonts provide consistent brand recognition across platforms, and are readable on all surfaces where Vipps communicates. Making it even more fun and accessible, we programmed the expressions to magically appear when hitting the number keys on your keypad.

It was important to showcase everyday-life situations. The brand photos are capturing magical and social Vipps moments, with a nordic feel. Kudos to the people at Pudder for helping out. We re-skinned vipps.no, built on the same CMS they already had. We made it friendlier, playful and more intuitive, while keeping it to the bare minimum of elements.

The new and improved app is smoother, faster and has several new, handy functions. The app is designed in the Vipps spirit, both in tone of voice, look and feel. The app is designed and developed by our talented collegues over at Bakken & Bæck. The lovely illustrations is crafted by Jon Arne Berg/ByHands. Over the years, Vipps has become one of Norway’s strongest and most cherished brands. The word «Vipps» is now used as a verb when paying someone back, either to a friend, when buying something or paying your bills. It has made the world easier for companies, friends and family, second hand stores and markets, you name it. It’s so simple that it has lowered the bar to pay off your debt or asking someone to pay back theirs in a heartbeat.