HSBC is reportedly readying a global payments app to take on companies like Wise and Revolut.
Dubbed Zing, the app will first be offered in Great Britain, though the CEO of the bank’s personal banking operation told Bloomberg News on Tuesday (Jan. 2) that the plan is to launch in other countries in the months to come to capture the growing market for wealthier consumers.
“Zing has a global ambition,” Nuno Matos said in an interview. “We want to establish ourselves as a global platform for international payments, which ties perfectly with our international payments strategy for HSBC, and you should see us very soon in Asia, in the Middle East and in EU markets.”
According to Matos, Zing will be available on the Apple and Google app stores within days and will be open to non-HSBC users in a bid to “attack” the international retail payments market.
As Bloomberg notes, HSBC in 2020 debuted a product called Global Money that provides its customers with fee-free currency service. The offering processed transactions worth about $11 billion in 2022.
Matos told the news outlet Zing will draw users who could then possibly do more banking with HSBC as the bank aims to become the top financial institution for internationally mobile clients.
“It’s a bold move for us,” Matos said. “This is HSBC playing outside of its traditional perimeter of customers, and really attacking, if you want, of taking advantage of a contingent, which is big, is growing, looks like us, and it’s here for us.”
The pending launch of Zing comes at a time when a majority of consumers see pay by bank — or account-to-account (A2A) payment — offerings in a favorable light.
According to findings from the study “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Consumer Familiarity Controls Account-to-Account Payment Growth,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and AWS collaboration, 84% of users said that they were either very or extremely satisfied with their most-used A2A payment platform.
“This could be attributed to these platforms’ success in making the payment experience not just seamless but also part of an ecosystem where users frequently interact and transact,” the study said. “Because consumers complete many of these transactions within a known network — sending money to the same recipients — the comfort and trust levels are higher, reinforcing platform loyalty.”
