HSBC shuts Zing, its payments app launched in January 2024 to compete with Revolut and Wise, marking the latest failed fintech venture by a traditional bank
Akila Quinio / Financial Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
HSBC introduced Zing as a UK-led international-payments challenger with ambitions for a wider rollout, setting it directly against established fintech brands rather than extending its core banking app. Its closure reverses that standalone payments-app launch strategy within roughly a year.
The outcome echoes Barclays’ earlier decision to combine bPay and Pingit after bPay struggled to attract users, underscoring the difficulty incumbent banks have had in sustaining separate consumer-payment brands.
First-order effects
- HSBC ends Zing as a distinct bid to compete with Revolut and Wise, removing the app from that consumer-payments contest.
- Zing users face the loss of a standalone HSBC payments product; the report does not specify what replacement or migration path, if any, HSBC will offer.
Second-order effects
- Revolut and Wise lose one bank-backed challenger, while HSBC must decide whether to serve the same payments demand through its main bank offering rather than a separate brand.
- The shutdown reinforces the execution hurdle for banks that try to build fintech-style products independently, a pattern also visible in Barclays’ bPay and Pingit consolidation.
Third-order effects
- If similar projects continue to be wound down, consumer payments may become more concentrated between specialist fintechs and banks’ integrated apps, rather than standalone ventures launched by incumbents.
- The episode also tests whether open-banking-based payment alternatives can gain durable consumer adoption; later UK coverage describes that model as struggling to become a viable card alternative.
The trend: Traditional banks are finding that launching a separate fintech brand is not, by itself, enough to dislodge specialist payments platforms with established user bases.