Welcome to Closer to the Consumer quantilope’s weekly initiative to bring you quick consumer insights with meaningful business impact.
We asked more than 400 US Consumers “What are the most important features of a finance app?”
Q2 2019 was a record quarter for investments funneling into the FinTech space, climbing over $8B with more than 25 $100M+ rounds. As the finance market becomes more saturated, heritage banks and finance start-ups have no choice but to deliver secure, seamless digital experiences to separate themselves and keep consumers engaged.
With a focus on investment, banking, money transfer, and money management apps, we asked 404 18-49 year-old US consumers who have used a finance app in the last year to rank the features and benefits that are most important to them in each app category. It’s no surprise that users ranked data security and encryption as the first or second most important feature across all four app categories.
What's more interesting though, is when you take a look at the least important features across app type. For wealth management apps specifically (think Mint or Qapital) the least important feature reported by consumers is having a retirement planner or a 401K analyzer. These fall far behind bill payment capabilities, cash purchasing tracking, and even biometric authentication (otherwise known as fingerprint logins), uncovering an emphasis on the need for immediate money management support versus a long term saving strategy.
Within the mobile banking space (a market which is expected to grow to 2B consumers by 2020) the ability to deposit a check using your smart phones camera stuck out in the top five features consumers desired for banking apps.
P.S. Only 29% of consumers would definitely consider opening a debit card through a finance app. The top reasons why not? Trust concerns and “I already have enough cards, I don’t need anymore.”
