Our reporter Peng Yan

　　The “convenience at the fingertips” brought by the mobile banking app has now become a “burden at the fingertips”.

　　Many users reported to the "Securities Daily" reporter that the increasingly proliferation of mobile banking apps has problems such as duplication of functions, poor experience, and homogeneity.

The reporter also found that, in addition to reducing the number of branches, many banks have begun to integrate their APP product functions since last year, and "shrink" their mobile client business.

　　Analysys Senior Analyst Su Xiaorui told a reporter from Securities Daily, “Banks’ integration of mobile apps is based on the measurement of APP’s historical performance on the one hand; on the other hand, it is to better integrate its various resources and improve operational efficiency.” .

　　Many banks reduce the number of apps

　　A few days ago, Postal Savings Bank issued an announcement stating that from November 17th, it will stop the registration and payment services of the Postal Savings Life APP; from December 22nd, it will stop all the services of the Postal Savings Life APP and close the download of the Postal Savings Life APP. Entrance.

In August of this year, the Industrial Bank announced that it would terminate the "Industrial Corporate Bank" APP service on October 11, and related functions have been migrated to the "Industrial Manager" APP.

　　As early as last year, Everbright Bank merged the direct banking APP "Sunshine Bank" with the mobile banking APP.

Earlier, ICBC also sorted out its APP system and terminated the operation of multiple head office-level apps.

　　Su Xiaorui suggested that in the future, banks can improve APP user experience in terms of customer service, design and layout, and function settings.

At the same time, it is necessary to do a good job of content, make differences, realize traffic through cross-marketing, and achieve profitability; set up a reasonable user rating system and incentive measures to increase user stickiness.

　　According to industry insiders, behind the proliferation of bank APP development is the bottleneck state after the rapid growth of bank APP traffic.

When the number of bank APP users has grown to a certain level, it is no longer realistic to require the bank APP to grow at the previous rate.

　　According to data released by the third-party data analysis agency Analysys, as a representative institution of domestic retail banks, the growth of active users of China Merchants Bank's mobile banking APP has been weak.

The semi-annual report shows that as of the end of June 2021, the MAU (monthly active users) of the two major apps of China Merchants Bank and Pocket Life was 105 million, a decrease of 1.87 percentage points from the previous month.

The year-on-year data is not optimistic. As of the end of June 2021, the MAU of the "China Merchants Bank" APP only increased by 0.2% compared with the end of last year, and the number of monthly logins per capita dropped from 11.98 at the end of last year to 10.94.

The MAU of China Merchants Bank’s “Handheld Life” app was 43.47 million, which was also a decrease of 2.56 million from the end of last year.

　　In addition, financial APP supervision and governance have gradually become stricter.

On October 19, the China Internet Finance Association reported on its official website that 17 financial apps had not completed the filing and rectification work within the specified time.

The report shows that the 17 client software involves 8 financial institutions, including 5 banks, and 1 insurance company, payment company, and consumer finance company.

　　Need to focus on user needs and experience

　　In recent years, banks have vigorously developed mobile banking services. Some banks have explored the provision of multi-scenarios, multi-industry, and multi-channel online financial services based on scenarios, ecology, and digitalization.

For example, some banks have successively released private banking special editions of mobile banking and corporate mobile banking editions.

Many banks have also launched a variety of mobile banking versions for different customer segments, including senior, rural, small and micro enterprise versions, and English versions.

However, in the process of innovation, it is difficult to avoid the overlapping and homogenization of banking APP business.

　　"Securities Daily" reporters searched in a number of application software stores and found that most of the top banks have 3 to 4 apps, covering personal, corporate, life service, transfer payment, loan, etc. Subdivisions.

The subdivision boundaries between the APPs of the same bank are not clear, many businesses overlap, and the degree of homogeneity of the APPs of each bank is relatively high.

　　The proliferation of banking apps has also been complained by many users.

"For different banking businesses, you need to download a variety of apps." Mr. Wang from Haidian District, Beijing, told a reporter from Securities Daily that he is usually busy at work, so he often uses mobile banking, but many mobile banking apps not only occupy mobile phone space seriously. I don't know much about its many functions, and the usage rate is low.

　　There are many users who have similar feelings to Mr. Wang.

"In addition to the bank's official APP, the bank has also launched several APPs for shopping, life, credit cards, etc." Aunt Zhang complained to reporters, "Although the APP has been downloaded a lot, there are many applications that cannot be used a few times a year. "

　　Another important reason for banks to adjust online service channels is that due to the pressure of peaking traffic, the surge in demand for non-contact financial services poses challenges to the continued growth of mobile banking apps and user retention.

　　Pan Helin, executive dean of the Institute of Digital Economy, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, told a reporter from the Securities Daily that banks can try two ways to improve the user experience of existing apps.

The first is to divert from offline channels to online. Bank staff at offline branches need to be given certain incentives to cultivate staff to establish traffic awareness and Internet thinking; the second is to increase APP extensions, increase social functions and e-commerce functions, and introduce more content , Or cross-border self-media, etc.

Banking apps can use embedded finance to rely on Internet giants to expand users and increase stickiness, or through offline scene finance, to achieve the purpose of attracting customers, acquiring customers, and sticking customers.

(Securities Daily)