Banco Pichincha's Co-Designed Accessible Mobile Banking — Blind Customers Guiding App Development in Ecuador

Banco Pichincha, Ecuador's largest private bank, reported serving 54,000 blind clients in 2022. Like most mobile-banking apps, its interface had been built assuming users could see the screen — a barrier the bank set out to remove by involving blind customers directly in redesigning it, rather than retrofitting accessibility after launch.

Two blind clients, Mauricio Suárez and Lenin Carrera, worked with the bank's digital-channels team during development, testing screen-reader navigation on iOS (VoiceOver) and Android (TalkBack) so customers could complete transfers, bill payments, top-ups and card payments independently. The update was presented publicly by digital lead Ariana Solís at Quito's Digital Bank event on 28 July 2022, and the bank followed up in March 2026 with what it describes as Ecuador's first financial-sector accessibility hackathon, again inviting blind users to test the app.

The 2022 co-design launch, named participants and methodology were corroborated independently by Ecuadorian outlets Primicias and Forbes Ecuador. The bank reports that over 2,000 users activated the app's accessible mode within six months of 2026, and the 2026 hackathon surfaced findings such as 'many interfaces still assume all users can see the screen.'

The independent press does not corroborate the specific 2026 figures — the addressable client count (30,000 in the bank's 2026 account, versus 54,000 reported independently in 2022) and the 2,000-activation number both come only from Banco Pichincha's own blog and should be read as self-reported rather than independently verified.