In 2004, Bank of America asked design firm IDEO to come up with an idea to attract more customers. Instead of starting inside the walls of Bank of America headquarters, IDEO ventured into the field to observe real people's relationships with money.

During their ethnographic research on their targeted customers: boomer-age women with children. IDEO made an intriguing observation. These women were rounding up all of their household transactions to make addition easier, which added a buffer in their bank accounts.

Based on this behaviour, IDEO developed a service called Keep The Change. When a purchase is made using a Bank of America Visa debit card, the cost is rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference from the customer’s checking account is added into her savings account. This bit of financial wizardry also solved another problem: low savings rates among the members of the target demographic.

The campaign proved so popular that it drew more than 2.5 million customers in its first year, including 700,000 new checking accounts and one million new savings accounts for the bank.

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IDEO - USA