The Business Mobile Banking Rank 2024 provides a comprehensive analysis of digital banking services for small and micro-businesses, focusing on the evolving needs and challenges within this sector. Conducted in Eastern Europe in September 2024, this extensive research evaluates 782 criteria across 140+ user scenarios for 11 mobile banks operating on Android platforms. It highlights the state of digital experiences, identifies best practices, and reveals key growth opportunities for financial institutions to improve their mobile banking services. This report is essential for banks aiming to enhance their offerings for small and micro-business clients, ensuring they remain competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape. The report also offers strategic collaboration opportunities with the Markswebb team, providing tailored insights to meet the specific needs of any business.
To stay ahead in the competitive digital banking landscape and fully leverage the insights from the Business Mobile Banking Rank 2024, partner with Markswebb. Contact our team today to explore how we can help tailor your strategy, enhance your digital services, and unlock new growth opportunities for your business.
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The top-performing banks have demonstrated excellence in several product categories, including payment acceptance setup, online lending, and digital deposit services. Close competitors have shown strengths in areas such as online accounting for individual entrepreneurs, group company management, and role-based access models. These banks set the standard for digital banking excellence by focusing on personalization and addressing client needs beyond traditional banking services.
Banks ranked in the middle range show significant potential in advancing their platforms. Their priority is to enhance core products, such as onboarding processes, contextual guidance, notification settings, and online chat efficiency, to align with market standards. Meanwhile, the lower-ranked banks are encouraged to focus on foundational improvements and developing essential services for individual entrepreneurs, such as automated accounting, document management, and corporate card management.
The report identifies three major trends shaping the future of digital banking for small businesses: the need for enhanced personalization, the expansion of services beyond basic banking, and the importance of developing specialized solutions for various sectors such as IT, government procurement, and e-commerce. These trends highlight the importance of continuous innovation and strategic development in maintaining a competitive edge.
There are few remaining opportunities for banks to be the sole leader in basic digital banking services. Most banks have already implemented the essential features, creating a level playing field in foundational areas. This shift in the competitive landscape means that the battle for leadership will move beyond core banking services, such as payments and account management, to more specialized digital solutions that meet unique business needs.
The development of services specifically designed for small business leaders remains underdeveloped. Many mobile banks lack comprehensive tools for managing complex business tasks, such as changes to executive data, regulatory codes, and signature settings. This represents a significant growth opportunity for banks willing to invest in solutions that enable businesses to operate in a mobile-only environment. Key capabilities like onboarding, effective communication in chat, offline branch locator, counterparty data management, and risk and tariff control are increasingly seen as differentiators.
Finally, the research highlights the importance of response speed in customer support. While many banks have developed robust chat functionalities, only two currently achieve an average response time of under one minute. Speed is becoming a critical differentiator, with the future likely moving towards AI-powered chatbots that offer faster and more efficient resolution of customer issues. Additionally, while many digital leaders have slowed their pace of innovation in foreign economic activities, the market has converged towards a standard level of quality, leaving little room for differentiation in these traditional areas.
The findings underscore the need for mobile banks to build a flexible framework that can accommodate a growing range of services, providing comprehensive control over all products and processes. This approach not only enhances the overall digital experience but also positions banks to meet evolving client demands and maintain competitiveness in a crowded market.
The Business Mobile Banking Rank 2024 provides essential insights to accelerate development and enhance the quality of the digital customer experience in mobile banking. Key areas include:
Based on the research's findings, business can benefit from a customized audit designed to identify growth areas and competitive positioning in the digital market. This audit is grounded in a comprehensive checklist of 782 criteria and offers a prioritized set of recommendations tailored to improve customer experience. We invite you to collaborate with us to leverage these insights, optimize your digital strategy, and achieve a stronger competitive edge in the market.
The methodology of the Business Mobile Banking Rank 2024 is based on a cross-methodological approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative analyses to provide a comprehensive evaluation of mobile banking services. The study breaks down tasks at a micro-level, meticulously assessing the implementation of digital solutions across ten product blocks. This includes hundreds of user scenarios and evaluation criteria, covering aspects such as debit and credit business cards, trade and internet acquiring, loans, payroll projects, and role-based access models.
In 2024, the evaluation system was significantly updated to reflect the latest technological advancements and trends. The criteria set expanded by 193 new parameters, now totaling 782, and an additional weighting factor was introduced, bringing the total number to four. This includes considerations for functional criticality, frequency of use, market coverage among small and micro-business entrepreneurs, and unique differentiating attributes. This data is further validated through interviews with product teams and end-users, adding real-world context to the findings. This rigorous and detailed approach ensures that the ranking accurately identifies the digital leaders in the industry.
It is important to note that this year, we adopted a dual research perspective, combining both a product-centric horizon and a "customer state" horizon. The latter is a unique lens specifically designed to capture elusive user trajectories that emerge from the evolving needs of businesses in real-time. This horizon was explored through user stories, allowing us to track these dynamic changes. This combined approach has revealed numerous deep insights, which are comprehensively detailed in our full report.
Through our comprehensive research, we identify numerous critical insights; here, we present a select few. The Business Mobile Banking Rank 2024 highlights a critical growth opportunity: achieving a seamless in-product experience across all digital banking services. While some progress has been made - particularly in the digitalization of foreign currency account openings, where digital maturity exceeds 80% - the overall digitalization level across all stages remains low, averaging just 50%. This disparity underscores the underdeveloped state of the market and the significant room for growth in achieving fully integrated digital services.
One of the main challenges identified is the gap between information gathering and transaction completion stages. In six out of nine product areas, the process of providing information about service terms is more advanced than the actual execution of transactions. This disconnect often forces users to leave the mobile application to finalize deals, diminishing the overall user experience. Additionally, there is a notable contrast between the capabilities for internet acquiring and foreign currency accounts - while the initial setup may be digitally accessible, ongoing management and customer support remain largely offline.
The report also identifies a lack of integration with fast payment systems as a major obstacle. Implementing such systems in mobile banking environments remains practically unfeasible for many banks. To overcome these challenges, the next step for banks is to focus on creating a seamless experience within their digital products, ensuring that users can complete all tasks - from setup to ongoing management - within a single, cohesive platform. This strategic focus will help banks meet the evolving expectations of their clients, reduce friction in the user journey, and ultimately drive competitive differentiation in the marketplace.
| Category | Experiments | Market Standard | Emerging Trends and Breakthrough Opportunities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform | 1. Group financial management 2. Change of NACE codes and update of legal entity data |
1. Faster chat responses 2. End-to-end search through text queries 3. Contextual hints within sections 4.Risk control services from the tax authorities |
Two-factor authorization setup |
| Foreign Economic Activities (FEA) | 1. Online account opening 2. Contract management 3. Currency exchange |
Display of expected payments | |
| Settlement and Cash Services (SCS) | Cash ordering | 1. Customization of account display 2. Statements for closed accounts |
Closure of additional accounts |
| Loans | Uploading statements from other banks for better conditions | Various ways of early repayment | 1. Connection of bank guarantees 2. Interactive condition calculator |
| Corporate Cards | Expense category setup | 1. Visualization of transactions on personal banking apps 2. Card-only notification settings |
Issuance of credit business-cards |
| Deposits | Interest payments to accounts in other banks | 1. Detailed description of conditions 2. Interest on balance |
Auto top-up setup |
| Payment Acceptance | Online acquiring application enhancement | 1. Payment acceptance management through the Fast Payment System (FPS) 2. Creation of multiple retail outlets or websites |
1. Online refund processing 2. Detailed statistics with visualization |
| Accounting | Detailed tax calculation information | 1. Editing the taxable base 2. Integration with FTS (Federal Tax Service) services 3. Importing statements from other banks |
|
| Document Management | 1. Prospective – Electronic Document Management (EDM) service based on the bank 2. Reconciliation statement with counterparties |
||
| Employees | Employee verification service Digital payroll cards |
1. Self-employed worker service 2. Restriction of employee access to specific accounts |
Log of payments made by employees |
The Business Mobile Banking Rank 2024 provides a clear picture of the digital banking landscape for small and micro-businesses, highlighting leaders, best practices, and growth opportunities. As competition intensifies, banks must focus on moving beyond routine daily tasks to become versatile tools in various business scenarios. By concentrating on delivering fewer products with maximum quality at every stage - from understanding conditions to formalization and usage - banks can align more closely with the evolving needs of their clients personalization, expanded service offerings, and specialized solutions to maintain a competitive edge.
Collaboration with Markswebb offers a unique opportunity to gain strategic insights, prioritize development efforts, and optimize digital solutions tailored to specific market needs, ultimately enhancing customer experience and strengthening competitive positioning in the digital marketplace.
We’ve evolved dozens of successful financial services and are eager to prove that our expertise can be implemented in other industries and around the world. Have a look at our success stories!
We’ve evolved dozens of successful financial services and are eager to prove that our expertise can be implemented in other industries and around the world. Have a look at our success stories!
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