Localizing financial products for real people
- Stakeholders
- Bank partners · Product teams · Regional market teams · Content Design
- My role
- Arabic content ownership · Card naming · UX writing · Localization · Campaign content
- Duration
- 6 months
- Tools
- Google Docs · Figma · Slack
Context
Following the launch of talabat’s first co-branded credit card with ADCB in the UAE, the product expanded to two additional markets through partnerships with CIB in Egypt and CrediMax in Bahrain.
I owned the Arabic content across all three launches, from naming each card in Arabic to creating the end-to-end Arabic experience across the product and supporting communications.
My scope included benefit pages, card status flows, activation emails, referral campaigns, campaign terms and conditions, and other touchpoints throughout the card journey.
The challenge
Launching the same type of financial product across three Arabic-speaking markets didn’t mean creating one Arabic experience and reusing it three times.
Each bank had its own terminology, tone of voice and writing standards, while each market brought different linguistic expectations.
The challenge was to maintain a recognizable talabat experience while adapting the content to feel native to each market and aligned with each banking partner.
Three markets, three approaches
For the first launch, I created the Arabic experience in Modern Standard Arabic while aligning the content with ADCB’s established tone, terminology and writing standards.
The CIB launch required a different approach. Rather than Modern Standard Arabic, the experience needed to feel natural to an Egyptian audience.
I localized the product copy into Egyptian Arabic, working closely with Egyptian colleagues to validate language and expressions before sending the content to CIB for further review.
This was the most challenging of the three launches because it required balancing talabat’s voice, CIB’s standards and authentic Egyptian language without making the experience feel forced or overly translated.
For the Bahrain launch, I returned to Modern Standard Arabic while adapting the experience to CrediMax’s terminology and content conventions.
One word, three translations
One of the clearest examples of why localization couldn’t follow a one-size-fits-all approach was a single word: “cashback.”
Cashback
استرداد
كاش باك
استرجاع نقدي
There wasn’t one universally “correct” translation.
Each banking partner had established terminology that its customers already encountered across its products and communications. Rather than forcing a single talabat translation across all three experiences, I adapted the terminology to each partner while maintaining consistency within the individual card journey.
Consistency didn’t mean making all three experiences identical. It meant creating a consistent experience within the language and conventions of each market and banking partner.