🧭 Context

This case study was built for POP, a Gen Z-focused fintech app that gamifies saving and shopping through rewards.
As a real POP user navigating the “salary-to-swiggy” life cycle, I realized something: POP helps us spend smartly, but it doesn’t yet help us budget smartly.

So I reimagined POP’s next evolution - not just as a payment and reward app, but as a daily financial companion that makes Gen Z feel good about money.

💡 Approach

Problem Statement:
Gen Z doesn’t hate budgeting - we just hate how boring and guilt-driven it feels.
POP already cracked shopping + saving through rewards; now it can gamify budgeting to make discipline feel dopamine-rich.

My Solution: Two core feature ideas that build habit loops around smarter money behavior:

🕹 POPchallenges – Gamified Budgeting

Monthly challenges where users set spending goals (₹40k, ₹50k, etc.)
POP tracks UPI spends via account aggregator APIs across GPay, PhonePe, etc.
Stay within budget → earn bonus POPcoins; overspend → earn fewer coins.
Impact: Builds healthy habits, daily app touchpoints, and UPI retention through fun.

🤖 POPchat – The AI Finance Buddy

An in-app conversational assistant that tracks, tags, and nudges your spending.
Sends contextual reminders like “You’ve spent ₹1,800 on food this week - Blinkit bundle instead?”
Encourages smart swaps, spending awareness, and reward optimization.
Impact: Makes finance conversational, personal, and emotionally engaging.

Together, these features turn POP into a habit engine - from “spend → earn” to “budget → win.”

🚀 Learnings (Product + Growth Perspective)

Behavioral design > pure gamification: Rewarding good financial behaviour builds deeper retention than discounts.

Data as delight: Transaction-level data can power empathy-driven nudges, not just insights.

Product growth takeaway: Every app that solves for discipline must first solve for dopamine.