In the last two years, financial technology (fintech) app downloads jumped 132 percent globally and 110 percent in the US alone. That’s according to AppsFlyer’s latest report on the state of finance app marketing, which details COVID-19’s impact on the industry.
Last year, fintech app marketers worldwide invested $3 billion to acquire new users and have already spent $1.2 billion in Q1 2021, reports AppsFlyer. US fintech app marketers commanded over 35 percent of worldwide budgets, investing $985 million on user acquisition in 2020. Latin America came in a distant second with a 20 percent share, followed by Japan and Korea and Western Europe.
Demand for finance apps is growing across the world. Between Q1 2019 and Q1 2021, as more people switched to banking and investing from home, non-organic (NOI) installs globally ballooned 172 percent.
AppsFlyer notes that 29 of the top 40 markets by app installs saw a 20 percent increase year-over-year (YoY). During Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, the top three markets by number of fintech app installs were India, Brazil and Indonesia, which altogether comprised nearly half of the global number of downloads.
AppsFlyer’s research also shows digital banking installs increased 45 percent in Q1 2021, while traditional banks saw a 22 percent rise in installs during the same period.
In the US, NOI doubled between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, although the surge in cost of media in iOS made it harder for the average finance app to scale UA as much as Android, according to AppsFlyer. The report shows there was a 50 percent gap between the share of NOI installs on both platforms, mostly driven by investment apps.
Another result of the high demand for finance apps: a 34 percent jump in cost per install (CPI) between Q1 2020 and Q2 2020 to $12.4 average per app. AppsFlyer found that CPI dropped 28 percent in Q3.
Financial services lead iOS with a 37 percent conversion rate—nearly 70 percent higher than the runner-up, investment apps. For Android, digital banking apps came in first with a 33 percent conversion rate.
Lastly, AppsFlyer data show that app install fraud rates in the US have plummeted, with Android’s fraud rate dropping 80 percent between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021. Though the fraud rate was much lower on iOS, the decline in app install fraud on the platform was similar. Bots were the primary form of fraud attack on Android while click flooding plagued iOS.
AppsFlyer’s findings are based on an anonymous aggregate of proprietary global data gathered from 4.7 billion finance app installs. Among those installs, 400 million installs and 120 million NOI were based in the US.
