Lending & payment apps more likely to get installed than banking apps: Report

PTI: Payment and lending apps are more likely to get installed than banking apps, according to a study published in the RBI's latest Bulletin.

Understanding user experience is crucial for advancing FinTech innovations and shaping customer-centric policies, said the article titled The Untold Story of FinTech Customers Experience published in the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) September Bulletin.

Three sectors - payment, lending, and banking

Among the three sectors under study -- payment, lending and banking, 11 apps with payment or lending giving personal loans as their primary business are more likely to be installed than banking, it added.

“The likelihood of receiving a review per unique FinTech app installation is 0.54 per cent, marginally higher for payment and lending apps (0.6 per cent) compared to banking technology apps,” the article said.

Although the apps under study have received around six million reviews during the last two years, providing ample opportunities to understand the major customer concerns, it added.

“FinTech reviews are polarised in India, with around 20 per cent of total reviews belonging to one star and 67 per cent of total reviews belonging to five stars. Thus, these extreme reviews account for almost 87 per cent of total reviews in the FinTech ecosystem,” said the article authored by Ashish Khobragade, Sakshi Awasthy and Rakhe Balachandran, the Department of Economic and Policy Research (DEPR), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and research intern in DEPR, Mantisha. In terms of sentiment analysis, it said the numbers may vary.

Positive reviews of apps

Notably, the article said 61.7 per cent of all FinTech apps studied received a share of positive reviews in the 50 to 80 per cent range. A smaller share of apps (7 per cent) received less than 20 per cent positive reviews.

"Thus, the distribution of mean positive reviews is slightly negatively skewed in the Indian FinTech ecosystem," it added.

Among the FinTech apps that were below the overall positive average, 58 per cent belong to the payments sector, 22 per cent belong to alternative lending, and 20 per cent belong to the banking tech sector.

The authors said over 5.69 million reviews, spanning April 2022 to August 2024, were collected, along with app-specific data like unique installations, review counts and major app updates. The open-access Python package google-playscraper was used to extract app reviews.

It further said the most positive emotion associated with the Indian FinTech ecosystem is trust across all sectors, followed by anticipation of a good outcome and joy.

Across sectors, around 50 per cent of customers have expressed trust in the FinTech ecosystem. Among the negative emotions, the most expressed emotion is anger, followed by sadness, fear and disgust.

Customer support

"A major concern identified across sectors is customer support and service (CSS), which emerges as the most significant concern for banking technology customers, and the second-largest for payment tech and alternative lending tech users," according to the article.

Within this category, key issues include unresponsive customer support, such as delayed or no responses to emails, calls, or chat queries; lack of effective escalation mechanisms and inadequate resolution for critical or urgent issues or difficulties in reaching out to a human agent; rude or unprofessional behaviour from customer support staff, it added.

Disclaimer: Mint has a tie-up with fintechs for providing credit, you will need to share your information if you apply. These tie-ups do not influence our editorial content. This article only intends to educate and spread awareness about credit needs like loans, credit cards and credit score. Mint does not promote or encourage taking credit as it comes with a set of risks such as high interest rates, hidden charges, etc. We advise investors to discuss with certified experts before taking any credit.

For all personal finance updates, visit here