As many as 71.8% of banking app users are worried that adding too many services will leave their apps cluttered and confusing, according to new research from Miquido.
And while banks are expanding their apps beyond traditional financial services into areas such as mobility, ticketing, health, and shopping, most respondents aren't ready to give up the dedicated apps they already use.
In fact, some 80.4% still prefer a dedicated app when accessing additional services.
Working with financial institutions to build and integrate these value-added service (VAS) ecosystems, full-service software development company, Miquido, sees the same question from the development side.
What actually belongs inside a banking app?
It was also one of the questions that Miquido researchers, Dominika Będkowska and Nina Kozłowska, have tried to answer.
"Respondents use an ecosystem of specialized apps in their daily lives and clearly prefer them over banking solutions," Będkowska says.
"However, this comes with concerns such as feature overload, reduced clarity, lower execution quality, data security risks, and the centralization of risk within a single application."
Miquido’s study also reveals a moderate and conditional potential for the development of VAS in mobile banking, provided that services are selected carefully, UX quality is excellent, and solutions remain consistent with the bank’s core role as a trusted financial institution.
"To deliver a coherent and seamless experience, banks must look at VAS as one logical ecosystem, where services are easy to find and use," Kozłowska adds.
"It’s not about what you can offer within your app anymore, but whether the particular service makes sense within your system."
Banking Super-Apps Struggle to Replace Dedicated Apps
Banks have a commercial reason to keep adding services.
As traditional banking products become harder to differentiate, additional services give them another way to increase customer service and engagement, while keeping more activity inside their apps.
But at the same time, customers already have a lot of alternatives.
Miquido's research found that respondents use separate apps for parking, transportation, food delivery, shopping, and ride-hailing.
And switching between them doesn't appear to be much of a problem.
Some respondents named five or six apps they use for different tasks, with Miquido finding little evidence that moving between platforms creates enough friction to make them abandon those familiar tools.
Banking services were becoming the first choice for some of those tasks only in isolated cases.
On the other hand, banks may still have one advantage over specialist apps. Customers already trust them.
The concept of stability as a service was also explored in Miquido’s report, which highlighted that in the unstable political landscape, users might increasingly value banks as service providers.
"Regulations such as DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) and NIS2 (Network and Information Security Directive) make this stability measurable and verifiable," Będkowska explains.
As a result, trust ceases to be a declaration and becomes a confirmed operational competence that customers experience as control, security, and continuity of access to services.
"In this model, the bank does not sell security as a product but ensures it by securely embedding the customer’s daily activities in a regulated environment," Kozłowska adds.
Banking App Users Question the Quality of Added Services
And many users aren't convinced banks can do those jobs as well.
Some 47.2% of respondents worry that a bank offering a wide range of services won't match the quality of specialized apps. Some even say they've already encountered that problem.
Users pointed to additional banking features with lower functionality or technical problems that made them harder to use than dedicated alternatives.
One respondent cited a parking feature with a long-standing bug, while another described buying public transport tickets through a banking app as more cumbersome than using a specialist service.
That’s where AI can play a vital role.
Artificial Intelligence offers not only a spectacular boost in the backend of an app but can also simplify interfaces and help with service visibility.
One example of an AI-powered improvement is a conversational interface, where users can type (or dictate) what they need, and a system finds relevant services for them.
Banks Need to Be Selective About Value-Added Services
Miquido found greater acceptance of additional services when users saw a connection to finances, documents, public services, or other tasks they already associated with their bank.
Some respondents also liked the idea of bringing selected services together, provided that the app remained easy to use.
But banks still have to decide which of those services are worth adding.
In-house development is better suited to narrower services closely tied to core banking, while external providers give banks another way to test and scale services without building each one themselves.
Banks should judge VAS on what they contribute to margin, customer engagement, data, and operating costs, rather than treating the launch itself as the measure of success.
Miquido’s experts emphasize that banks should start with what they can make easier for the customer.
"There's always another service you could add, but the hard part is deciding what deserves to be there," they explain.
"Can the bank remove a step? Can it make the payment easier? Can it do something better because it already has that financial relationship with the customer?"
If the answer to any of those is no, banks are asking someone to leave an app they already like without giving them much reason to.
So ask yourself. If more than 80% of customers still prefer a dedicated app for the same service, how many of those services need to be inside the banking app at all?
