Fintech apps outperform banks during pandemic in 2020

The report found that amid economic uncertainty, demand grew for finance apps across investing, banking, cash transfers and government aid.

The report, commissioned by app marketing platform Liftoff, analyzed 57 billion ad impressions across 81 million clicks, 12 million app installs, and 20 million first-time events in 188 apps for the full 2020 calendar year

It found that that “Finance apps were downloaded 4.6 billion times in 2020, with consumers spending 16.3 billion hours scanning their mobiles to check their finances.”

Per the report, downloads increased in April globally amid widespread shutdowns, with the most significant surge occurring in December: a clear indication of the pandemic’s impact on financial wellbeing.

“Notably, users took to fintech apps with enthusiasm, with fintech outperforming even the best banking apps by a factor of up to 10.8x. Investment and trading apps like Robinhood were among the top downloaded finance apps worldwide as many consumers took to day trading in the Covid era,” it stated.

CEO and co-founder of Liftoff, Mark Ellis,  said Covid-19 and the ensuing financial uncertainty resulted in users spending massive amounts of time on finance apps throughout 2020, and more readily activating in-app, with rates up a third to 25.1%.

“With many exploring new financial interests, marketers may want to consider tactics that offer resources to nascent users, encouraging retention and increasing confidence in in-app actions,” he added.

Indeed, in Ghana, all the fintech companies and digital finance platforms of the various organizations reported significant growth in the use of those platforms in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Notable among them was mobile money operator and remittance to mobile wallet service provider, Zeepay Ghana, which recorded a whopping 262% growth in volume of transaction, representing over 110 percentage point higher than its 150% target.

Some fintechs like Hubtel, for instance, deployed additional services like delivery services, which saw an exponential boost during the pandemic.

All the telcos in Ghana also reported significant growth in the usage of their digital platforms, particularly mobile money.

MTN, for instance, reported in the third quarter that Mobile money revenue grew by 27.3% and this was supported by an increase in the number of active users from new activations during the period, higher person to person transactional activity and broader penetration of more advanced services such as retail merchant payments and international remittances.

Again they recorded a 52.9% growth in digital revenue, also driven by the growth in the number of active subscribers as well as improvements to their video and gaming offerings.

“We also saw increased adopting of our My MTN app and Ayoba messaging app in the same period,” they reported.