Customers open the app every day, but they don’t talk to the bank

Digital contact with retail banks is now frequent, but it lasts very little time. Neobanks, on the other hand, have learned how to get opened every day for reasons that have little to do with the balance.
It is right there, in that scant minute of daily attention, that customer loyalty is being decided.

One minute, then it’s closed

Mobile banking in Italy won its battle a long time ago. The numbers are clear: according to the survey by ABI Lab with Doxa, 78% of users check their current account on their smartphone and 72% make bank transfers directly from mobile.

The study “Soldi, digitale e benessere” (Money, digital and wellbeing), carried out in May 2026 by ING People Insights Lab with YouGov on a sample of 1,039 Italian adults, also measures how often this happens: eight people out of ten look at their account at least once a week, and one in two Gen Z customers never sets foot in a branch.

In short, daily contact already exists. Nobody has to build it from scratch. The problem lies in its duration and, above all, in its content: two variables that banks measure far less than logins.

UXCam’s benchmarks for UK finance apps, based on 12.2 million sessions recorded in 2025, put the median banking session at 1.06 minutes and monthly opens per user at 4.72. Only the top-performing 25% of apps go beyond six opens per user per month.

It’s a picture that matches the experience of anyone with a bank account: you open the app, check the balance, close it and go back to whatever you were doing.

One minute a month of attention doesn’t build a commercial relationship. It builds a functional habit, which is something else, and that habit only holds until the day someone offers something better on the same screen.

A balance is not a conversation

The ING study contains a detail worth more than a lot of market analysis: for 58% of respondents checking their account is reassuring, yet 41% admit they have avoided it at least once for fear of what they might find.

So within that scant minute, no exchange takes place between customer and bank. What happens is a check, sometimes with a degree of anxiety that no interface can truly absorb.

In that moment the bank isn’t speaking to the person in front of it. It simply hands back a number that, in many cases, the customer already had in mind.

This explains an apparent contradiction that many Italian banks see on their dashboards: high app usage, low ability to sell a second product. The two figures don’t contradict each other. The channel stays open, but it offers nothing beyond the transaction, and a channel that offers nothing produces neither preference nor memory.

The same study, however, also shows where there is room to act: for two Italians out of three the ideal bank is digital, yet more than half want to be able to rely on a real advisor when a decision becomes important.

The demand for a relationship exists, and it is explicit. What’s missing is the everyday format in which to bring it to life.

Who talks to young people every day

While traditional banks manage little more than a minute a month per customer, a different kind of player has, over the same period, built a relationship that looks much more like a conversation.

In October 2026 Revolut reached 6 million customers in Italy, one million more than at the start of the year. The country thus passes 10% market penetration and becomes the company’s fourth-largest market worldwide by number of customers.

For anyone working in retail banking, though, the most interesting figure is the quality of that customer base rather than its size. The number of customers who have their salary paid into Revolut more than doubled in twelve months, while deposited savings exceed €1.2 billion, almost four times the previous year’s figure.

A current account that receives the salary becomes the infrastructure of everyday life: it brings with it cards, direct debits, managed savings and consumer credit.

Neobanks also get there thanks to an advantage the industry tends to underestimate: they offer many different reasons to open the app. Real-time notifications, spending categorisation, savings goals, small milestones to share.

Every extra reason is another opportunity for contact, and every contact leaves behind a bit of familiarity, the raw material loyalty is made of.

The loyalty paradox

The most immediate reaction, in many marketing departments, is to add points, rewards and cashback to the existing programme.

This is where you hit the limit described in our article on the loyalty paradox: when everyone offers points, points stop setting anyone apart. They’re no longer a reason to choose a bank, just the minimum requirement to stay in the game.

A programme built only on discounts, cashback or financial rewards is therefore easy to copy. A competitor only needs to offer a little more to convince the customer to switch.

Data presented in 2026 by the Osservatorio Fedeltà, Italy’s loyalty observatory, help explain where value has moved: the app reportedly accounts for 88% of the digital time spent by customers and generates a customer lifetime value three to five times higher than traditional web channels.

Value concentrates where people spend their time. So the question a bank should ask is not only how many times customers open the app, but: what do we offer them there, beyond the balance figure?

Five minutes a day as the unit of measure

This is the space where AWorld’s approach for banking customers fits in. The reference metric is deliberately simple: five minutes a day.

Five minutes of content that is genuinely useful to the person, with no promotions dressed up as education. Brevity, quizzes and small challenges make it easier to come back every day and turn attention into a habit.

The streak counts the consecutive days a person returns to the app. After a few days, breaking it becomes annoying, which is a small incentive not to forget. For AWorld, a good target is an average streak of around fifteen days.

Missions give the app a reason for use that changes over time and outlasts boredom. One week you learn to actually read your bank statement. The next, you compare two ways of saving. The week after that, you practise spotting a phishing attempt.

Financial education stops being an institutional brochure and becomes everyday content.

The community introduces peer comparison, through leaderboards and group challenges. On money topics this register works better than an institutional message: it takes the scolding tone out of the subject and brings it back to shared curiosity.

Rewards close the loop and mark the difference from traditional cashback. They come at the end of a learning path that has built competence, rather than at the end of a purchase.

Results measured on similar integrations in other sectors at least give an order of magnitude of what can reasonably be expected.

What changes in the bank’s numbers

A programme like this shouldn’t be judged on time spent in the app, which is a vanity metric: good for slides, not much use for the business.

It’s better to look at three indicators with a direct effect on the P&L.

The first is the share of primary accounts, measured by salary crediting and utility direct debits. This is exactly where neobanks are advancing most effectively, and where every percentage point lost can prove costly in the years that follow.

The second is the quality of CRM data. A customer who answers quizzes, chooses learning paths and states goals generates declared information, on top of what can be inferred from transactions. It helps the bank offer the right product at the right time and, above all, avoid the wrong offers that erode trust.

The third is the ability to sell complex products. With a customer who understands what a fund, a variable rate or a life insurance policy is, you can discuss that product without resorting to sales pressure.

Seen this way, financial education stops being a reputational cost item and becomes an investment in the channel that generates the most value.

The bottom line

Customers already open their bank’s app every day, but only to check the balance or make a transaction. That contact is short, silent and functional. And it becomes fragile as soon as a competitor offers a more useful experience, on the same smartphone.

Turning that minute into five minutes the customer freely chooses takes useful content and mechanics that invite them back the next day. A communication campaign isn’t enough: the work has to happen on the product.

So the question to bring to the next committee isn’t how many times customers open the app.

It’s this: why should they open it again tomorrow?

Want to see how it works in practice? Discover AWorld for banking and finance.