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STORE INTELLIGENCE · RUIKA LIN · MARCH 2017

Top Fintech Apps Grew 59% Last Quarter, Led by Payments and Investment Categories

Sensor Tower data shows that traditional bank apps continue to lose ground against fintech startups.

U.S. fintech app downloads hero image

Last month, Bank of America announced that it will be the first of 19 U.S. banks to incorporate Zelle—a person-to-person money transfer service similar to Venmo and Square Cash—into its own mobile app. In this report, we take a closer look at how non-bank fintech apps are growing in the U.S., and why big banks are trying to take back the user base currently occupied by their fintech competitors.

Based on our analysis, downloads of the top fintech apps in Q4 2016 grew approximately 59 percent year-over-year on the U.S. App Store and Google Play, according to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data. This growth was primarily driven by peer-to-peer payments apps and investment apps, with downloads of each category up by 78 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

Payments and Investment Apps Led Growth

Top U.S. fintech app categories by year-over-year Q4 2016 downloads

The top 10 fintech apps for Q4 2016 were: Credit Karma, Paypal, Venmo, Square Cash, Mint, Stash Invest, Xoom Money Transfer, Acorns, EveryDollar, and Robinhood. In total, they were downloaded approximately 11 million times last quarter.

As the chart above shows, among the four categories the most popular fintech apps represented, peer-to-peer payments apps and investment apps saw the largest year-over-year growth in downloads. Payments app installs grew 78 percent year-over-year in Q4, from 3.5 million to 6.3 million. Investment apps broke one million downloads, up by 84 percent year-over-year in Q4, from 578,000 installs to 1.1 million.

The main contributors to this significant growth in payments apps downloads included Venmo, whose downloads increased by 96 percent, and Square Cash, which increased by 132 percent year-over-year. Stash Invest, which surged by 370 percent, drove most of the increase for investment apps.

Credit Karma was the only top fintech app in the credit monitoring category, and grew by 39 percent from 1.9 million to 2.7 million downloads. Although its growth rate was not as significant as payments and investment apps', Credit Karma was still the No. 1 downloaded fintech app last quarter. (Fellow top 10 app Mint offers credit monitoring, but unlike with Credit Karma it is not the primary use case for the app.)

Bank vs. Non-Bank: The Rise of Fintech Apps

It's clear from the numbers that consumers have become increasingly comfortable with non-bank fintech apps over the past few years. With their mobile-first strategy, they are rapidly expanding user base given their convenience and simplicity. In direct competition with traditional brokerage firms, investment apps such as Stash Invest and Robinhood position themselves as the low-priced or even free stock trading alternatives, making investing simpler and more accessible for users. The social aspect of Venmo and Square Cash, combined with their ease of use and fast transfer of funds, is challenging traditional payments model using bank wire transfers or checks.

A more in-depth look at the direct competition between bank and non-bank personal finance apps reveals a staggering shift in download trends between 2015 and 2016, as shown in the chart below.

Top U.S. bank vs. non-bank finance apps by downloads for Q4 2015 and Q4 2016

We analyzed the top five most downloaded personal finance apps in the U.S. in both Q4 2015 and Q4 2016. In Q4 2015, three of the top five were mobile apps from established banks: Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, with Chase and Bank of America in the No. 1 and No. 2 positions, respectively. These three banking apps together accounted for six million downloads, almost twice as many as their two non-bank counterparts, Credit Karma and Paypal, which had 3.4 million downloads combined.

However, the bank vs. non-bank app dynamic reversed completely by the end of 2016. In Q4 2016, three of the top five were non-bank fintech apps: Credit Karma, Paypal, and Venmo, with Credit Karma and Paypal at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.

Non-bank apps not only more than doubled in downloads, reaching seven million last quarter, but also surpassed the bank apps' download figure by 55 percent. Bank app installs actually shrunk from six million to 4.5 million year-over-year in Q4.

Should this trend persist, mobile fintech services will continue to pose a serious threat to the traditional banking model. That said, it's no surprise that the big banks are teaming up to launch their own version of person-to-person payments apps to combat Venmo and Square Cash. As big banks aim to drive more users back to their mobile apps, and fintech companies move fast to introduce new features to their rapidly growing user base, we will continue to monitor how the battle between big bank and non-traditional fintech apps plays out through 2017.


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Ruika Lin

Written by: Ruika Lin, Mobile Insights Strategist

Date: March 2017