Just a year after launching digital challenger bank Zing, HSBC announced plans to close it – deciding to integrate its underlying technology platform into HSBC. While Zing successfully gained reach via a social media-led marketing strategy, this ultimately did not translate into sufficient volume, according to analysis by FXC Intelligence.
FXC found that Zing was particularly effective on TikTok, having outperformed Wise in terms of followers – despite being just a year old – thanks to a strategy that primarily targeted a younger audience (mostly Gen Z) than its main competitors Wise and Revolut.
Despite this TikTok success, which also amounted to gaining a number equivalent to a fifth of Revolut’s, Zing saw just one per cent of the estimated app downloads for Revolut and two per cent of those for Wise, from the start of 2024 to date.
While the two established brands have a primarily millennial customer base, Zing actively tailored its marketing to Gen Z customers and was getting results.
App data analysed by the data and intelligence company also suggests that users aged 18 to 24 represented the largest group for Zing, while for Wise and Revolut this was users aged 25 to 34.
Targeting Gen Z customers interested in travel, Zing’s social media content largely focused on its multicurrency wallet feature, with the company running a total of 12 competitions, 11 of which were travel-themed. These largely focused on luxury destinations and experiences, with holidays to Monaco, Dubai and Bangkok among the prizes on offer.
FXC Intelligence also noted that Zing’s money transfer solutions were much less of a focus, with the report highlighting that many travel-focused users young enough to be Gen Z are unlikely to have cross-border money transfer needs, and where they do are likely to be sending lower amounts than the levels typically associated with the developed market destinations Zing focused on.
Too early to target Gen Z?
This highlights the challenge of developing such a financial services product specifically for Gen Z at present, suggesting that Zing may have simply been too early, and that there may be greater opportunities to develop such products for this cohort in a few years, when both their international movement and disposable income is likely to be higher.
“Zing’s success in reaching a Gen Z audience through a highly targeted social media-led marketing strategy speaks to the potential of this group – and highlights that Gen Z customers have different values, behaviours and expectations than their millennial counterparts,” explained Lucy Ingham, editor-in-chief and head of content at FXC Intelligence. “However, the challenge HSBC faced in turning this into sufficient revenue suggests that this group is not yet at a level of sufficient financial maturity to be the primary focus for a consumer money transfer product.
“It also raises questions about whether grouping multicurrency wallets and money transfers is the most effective approach to developing products for this group, as users of the former are for the most part not going to be in need of the latter service.”
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