The banking industry is rapidly growing worldwide and gamification has played a significant role in this growth. Gamification in banking has transformed how customers engage with their finances and acquire knowledge by presenting challenges and offering rewards. Let’s delve into this approach that is reshaping the banking industry while providing support to customers on their financial journeys.
What is Gamification?
In terms, gamification involves incorporating elements and mechanics from games into other areas to engage and motivate individuals. Drawing inspiration from video games, this idea can be applied to various industries, such as education, health or financials.
The concept of gamification taps into our desire for achievement, competition and rewards to enhance growth and create a sense of accomplishment. Boosting productivity, fostering habit formation or building customer loyalty are usually among its key goals.
In the banking sector, gamification aims to make the overall banking experience more enjoyable and achieve business goals as well. On the one hand, organizations strive to promote saving habits, enhance financial literacy among customers, while on the other hand, they nurture long-term customer loyalty.
Through mobile applications, banks often introduce rewards programs where customers can earn points or badges for engaging in activities, usually transactions or saving money. However, there are some other helpful options that can be implemented through gamification in banking.
How Can Gamification Be Applied In Business?
Gamification can be implemented across departments and functions within a business to achieve key goals or temporary business objectives. Here are some notable ideas that can be tentatively divided into two groups.
Employees
You can start by incorporating game elements to effectively onboard employees or enhance the skills of existing ones. Quizzes, simulations and leaderboards to track progress will be helpful for on-job learning. If your employee wants a promotion, you can provide them with a simple and elegant solution that speeds up their training process through gamification techniques.
Work with employee productivity and strive to boost it by implementing gamification strategies in tasks and projects. Utilize task lists, progress bars and visual achievements to motivate teams to reach their goals. You can do the same for efficient project management with elements of gamification for setting objectives, monitoring progress and rewarding accomplishments upon reaching milestones and deadlines. To drive revenue growth, you can inspire sales teams through the implementation of sales contests with rewards or acknowledgments for performers.
And last but not least, promote employee well-being by incorporating health and wellness initiatives within the workplace environment. This may include promoting fitness, encouraging eating habits, and offering support for stress management through engaging challenges accompanied by appealing rewards.
Customers
For customers, develop loyalty programs with features like point systems, badges and rewards to boost engagement with your business. Encourage customers to refer friends or write reviews offering them some perks and valuable gifts.
Use game activity to encourage customers or users to share their thoughts and experiences. Who said market research should be boring? Gamify the process, add interesting characters who will guide users through the questionnaire, entertain them and reward them for participation with something materially or emotionally valuable, like discounts or entry into contests upon completion. The same technique can be applied to motivate customers to leave feedback on your goods or services.
To improve customer support experiences, you can incorporate game elements that reward support agents for resolving customer issues. Moreover, implementing a system where customer feedback and satisfaction scores serve as motivation for improvement would be beneficial.
Benefits of Gamification for Banking
The integration of gamification in banking brings advantages for both banks and their clients. In general, It helps increase customer engagement and loyalty while also attracting investments.
Attracting Clients
Simple and obvious: With a banking app full of gaming elements that go beyond features, banks can successfully attract clients.
Enhanced Customer Engagement
Gamification makes banking services more interactive and enjoyable, hence, clients are motivated to spend time using the mobile banking app and actively engage with services.
Promoting Services and Products
Stop relying on straightforward advertising methods. Banks can leverage gamification to promote their latest updates and offerings among their customers swiftly.
Data Insights
Digital solutions enable banks to analyze data about their existing clients, providing insights into their behavior patterns. This information can help teams develop strategies for enhancements and improvements.
Digital Transformation
Staying up to date with fintech trends is crucial for banks today. Implementing game solutions can serve as a step towards transformation for all stakeholders involved, including the bank's board, management, employees and customers.
Financial Literacy
Understanding finances is often challenging for individuals. Gamification in banking covers aspects like managing debt, savings and investments, the effects of inflation. Quizzes and interactive games in the banking experience can simplify these concepts for common users.
Key Gamification Features for the Banking Industry
If you're considering incorporating gamification into your mobile banking app or developing one with gamification elements to attract customers and enhance the user experience, we have some valuable ideas and key options that may be helpful for you.
Reward your customers:
- A point system, along with a reward catalog, is a strategy that encourages customer engagement with the app. Customers can earn points by performing banking activities (for example, making deposits through mobile banking apps or referring friends to the bank). These points can then be exchanged for rewards: cashback, gift cards, discounts or charitable donations.
- Loyalty programs that offer rewards based on customer engagement with the bank can further motivate their involvement.
Create a competition:
- Invite customers to challenge each other in savings contests or financial quizzes.
- Provide individual and group challenges and financial goals to give them something to strive for.
- Add leaderboards, charts, graphs, notifications, progress bars or status indicators to highlight customers’ performance and to help keep them informed about how close they are to achieving their goals or reaching milestones.
Promot financial literacy:
- Educate customers about literacy: explain complex things in a simple way, provide helpful information while making learning enjoyable and engaging.
Communicate with customers:
- Implement gamification to encourage customers to provide feedback or participate in surveys. And don’t forget to reward them at the end.
Examples of Gamification in Digital Banking
Let's take a look at some examples of how gamification has been implemented in banking:
Capital One has introduced a mobile banking app called CreditWise that adds an element of fun to credit monitoring. This app allows customers to track their credit scores. Also offers quizzes and simulations to help users better understand concepts related to managing credit.
Chase Bank has integrated elements of gamification into its Chase Mobile app. One interesting feature is the "Savings Challenge," where customers can set savings goals and receive notifications and rewards as they reach milestones on their savings journey.
ING Bank has recently launched a practical banking app called "ING Lions." This innovative application provides customers with opportunities to engage in challenges, quizzes and educational content focused on finance and get rewards in the end.
PNC Bank has introduced Virtual Wallet—a combination of checking and savings accounts that empowers customers to allocate funds effectively. The Money Bar, a tool that displays funds for spending, allows one to seamlessly save and manage funds. They also implemented a "Punch the Pig" feature that additionally encourages customers to save money: a user will have to transfer money to a savings account to interact with a funny avatar.
BBVA Bank has introduced an interactive platform called BBVA Game. This unique platform motivates customers to expand their knowledge by taking on challenges and quizzes related to finance. Users can earn points and compete with friends or other users through leaderboards.
Monobank has also incorporated gamification elements into its app. One noteworthy feature is the badge reward system, which aims to engage users. The bank also offers a cashback scheme where customers can accumulate rewards before transferring them onto their card balance. Monobank's "Shake to Pay" feature adds a touch of gamification to transactions by allowing users in proximity to transfer money simply by shaking their phones.
Conclusion
While the integration of gamification in banking apps is not a new practice, it is still innovative and continues to transform the industry at breakneck speed. It is the gamification elements that have helped to expand customer engagement opportunities, simplify and make financial education on key issues easier and more accessible, and promote positive behavioral change. With the help of simple and familiar badge awards, personalized challenges and innovative features, the financial routine is diversified, making banking services more attractive to customers.
If you've been considering the idea of creating a mobile banking app or adding gamification elements to your existing banking services, you're in the right place to bring that vision to life. Don't hesitate to reach out to our managers so we can have a conversation about your project. We'll assemble a product development team that cares and is dedicated to delivering top-notch results and supporting you every step of the way.
FAQs
First of all, it is necessary to consider several factors: the complexity of the project, the main tasks, the scope, the number of people in the team, etc. It usually takes from several weeks to several months, however, each project has its own characteristics and, therefore, an exact calculation can be obtained only after discussing all the conditions.
First of all, it is necessary to consider several factors: the complexity of the project, the main tasks, the scope, the number of people in the team, etc. It usually takes from several weeks to several months, however, each project has its own characteristics and, therefore, an exact calculation can be obtained only after discussing all the conditions.
It is a good decision. However, keep in mind that any update can cause dissatisfaction among regular users. It is recommended to conduct an in-depth study of the target audience and only then develop new elements. In addition, there may be risks related to the security and storage of sensitive user data if you involve third-party elements.
It is a good decision. However, keep in mind that any update can cause dissatisfaction among regular users. It is recommended to conduct an in-depth study of the target audience and only then develop new elements. In addition, there may be risks related to the security and storage of sensitive user data if you involve third-party elements.
That would be great, right? Although gamification can really help in many situations and solve several issues at the same time, not every banking service needs it. It is more a tool to attract new customers and increase loyalty than to improve banking services in general.
That would be great, right? Although gamification can really help in many situations and solve several issues at the same time, not every banking service needs it. It is more a tool to attract new customers and increase loyalty than to improve banking services in general.
