New apps, new players and new features for mobile banking in Germany

e fifth edition of the Optima Consultancy Mobile Banking App Review (Germany) 2022 is released today, in partnership with Visa , with app developers focus on friction-free design refreshes, faster load times and keeping up with the ever-increasing feature list.

For those of you who haven’t read our previous reports, the underlying motivation of the research is to track and measure digital transformation in banking. This edition of the German study is bigger than ever including an assessment of 114 app features across 27 providers, 54 apps, 2 operating systems with over 50 testers.

We tracked 12 additional app features this quarter which reflects innovations in app functionality over time. The average number of features supported across the market now stands at 40. There are significant variations, with Revolut supporting 90 features, more than three times the number of the less feature-rich apps. Feature support keeps on increasing, which begs the question; can a banking app have too many features?

In assessing app features we determine the most popular ones supported in the market. We call these the ‘table-stakes’. If a banking app does not have one of these features, then they are in the minority against their competitors’ apps. With the introduction of new apps to the study, the table-stakes features have increased to 28 features (vs. 22 in Q1 2022). This indicates the richness of features available in a banking app is continuing to grow. Interestingly, 'ATM locator' dropped out of the list which poses the question whether legacy banks have to maintain features that aren't relevant to the next generation of customers?

Vivid support the entire set of table stakes features, as do Revolut , N26 , and Tomorrow with the exception of Face ID on Android device. Only 4 apps have every feature supported by two-thirds of the market. These are the leading challenger brands.

Whilst features continue to come, challenger apps are also quick to fix bugs and squash performance issues thereby keeping their apps nifty and fresh. As we near the end of 2022, apps are set to release an average of 23 updates annually. Vivid Money have the highest rate of development having released 75 app updates so far in 2022, and estimated to end 2022 having released over 100!

Challengers, on average, are still releasing 4 times the number of updates compared to traditional providers, with no sign of the gap decreasing.

As we have seen in the UK study, fintech leads the way and Germany has the second-largest market in the European region. Increasing adoption of mobile banking platforms and fully digital banking experience contribute significantly to the market growth. Interest in the super app is growing and if traditional providers can keep up with innovation there remains an opportunity for them to retain customers.

Find the full study including an extensive assessment of ratings, log-in times and feature support by category at www.optima-consultancy.com/bankapp. We would love to hear what you think of the research.