A report from mobile analytics platform, App Annie indicate that in 2020, finance app downloads grew by 15% during the pandemic and mobile fintech applications outperformed banks by a factor of up to 10.8x globally.
It found that that “Finance apps were downloaded 4.6 billion times in 2020, with consumers spending 16.3 billion hours scanning their mobiles to check their finances.”
Per the report, downloads increased in April globally amid widespread shutdowns, with the most significant surge occurring in December: a clear indication of the pandemic’s impact on financial wellbeing.
“Notably, users took to fintech apps with enthusiasm, with fintech outperforming even the best banking apps by a factor of up to 10.8x. Investment and trading apps like Robinhood were among the top downloaded finance apps worldwide as many consumers took to day trading in the Covid era,” it stated.
CEO and co-founder of Liftoff, Mark Ellis, said Covid-19 and the ensuing financial uncertainty resulted in users spending massive amounts of time on finance apps throughout 2020, and more readily activating in-app, with rates up a third to 25.1%.
MTN, for instance, reported in the third quarter that Mobile money revenue grew by 27.3% and this was supported by an increase in the number of active users from new activations during the period, higher person to person transactional activity and broader penetration of more advanced services such as retail merchant payments and international remittances.
Again they recorded a 52.9% growth in digital revenue, also driven by the growth in the number of active subscribers as well as improvements to their video and gaming offerings.
“We also saw increased adopting of our My MTN app and Ayoba messaging app in the same period,” they reported.
