How gamification can turn your fintech app into a daily app

Finance and fintech apps sit on two contrasting pillars. On one hand, they have a loyal customer base, which trusts their services and is willing to stick with them for a long time. On the other, these apps are transactional, meaning that users only actually open them when they need them: the average fintech user makes only 150 interactions a year, and the most popular activities are checking their balance (45%) and transferring money (31%).¹

However, today, the landscape is changing. Besides acquiring new customers, finance and fintech apps are also aiming to more deeply engage the existing ones, increasing how often they return to the app between transactions. That’s where fintech gamification comes in. 

In this article, we look at how gamification has entered the fintech and finance space, reshaping some of the features that seemed set in stone, and how it can help turn infrequent, transaction-driven fintech app visits into more of an engaging, daily routine. Plus, for a closer look at how the industry is evolving to leverage gamification, we asked Anthony Ortolan, Senior Business Development Manager for LoyaltyPlay, for his insights and tips. 

💡Explore LoyaltyPlay for Finance & Fintech

Fintech gamification: How gamification is used in finance and fintech today

The term gamification refers to the use of game-like features outside of gaming apps. Gaming apps have taken decades to fine-tune deeply engaging and enjoyable app experiences, other categories are now leveraging and putting a spin on to improve the UX (and LTV) of their apps. Think of streaks, leaderboards, points, and challenges – many of these elements originated in gaming to make the experience more fun and engaging for users, a quality that holds no matter what app you inject the mechanics into.

According to AmplifAI², gamification can lead to increasing customer engagement by 48%, translating into more time spent in the app and increased customer loyalty. In fact, 43% of marketers see gamification as an essential feature to build brand loyalty.

The finance and fintech industry isn’t immune to this trend either. With competition getting harsher (the North America region alone is home to more than 12,500 financial technology companies³), financial institutions, even the most traditional ones, have started to adopt gamification in some form to delight customers in new ways and encourage engagement beyond transactions.

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Fintech gamification examples

But how are modern finance and fintech apps adopting gamified mechanics? Here are a few fintech gamification examples already live today:

• Progress bars are tied to saving programs to make the experience more engaging and give the user a sense of fulfillment when the goal is reached. For example, Chime allows users to set short-, mid-, and long-term goals, each with its own label and progress bar.
  
  
• Similar to progress bars, piggy banks are also used in saving programs. Koho, a Canadian digital banking platform, has recently launched a piggy bank feature, where users can drop a coin once per day to get double entries. 
  
  
• Points and leaderboards are another gamification feature quite popular in fintech. Revolut, the European provider of money management with over 75 million users, has RevPoints. It’s an offerwall-like system that rewards users for specific actions, such as referring a friend. 

👀 Read also: Achieving a 17x traffic surge for Revolut with the Mistplay Audience Network

The psychology behind gamification in finance and banking

While finance and gaming may seem like two opposite worlds, there are underlying psychological reasons why gamification in fintech works:

• It creates positive reinforcement: Gamification aligns with the behavioral science view of "choice architectures" for nudging, incentivizing, and rewarding user actions. In other words, gaming elements aren’t just fun, but they tie to the human desire for fulfillment and reward.
  
  
• It helps you capture user attention: In an era where businesses compete over user attention, adding gamified elements becomes a mechanism to capture a scarce psychological resource (user attention) and convert it into engagement data⁴. With an unexpected layer of playfulness in what can seem like a more traditional industry like banking, elements of gamification can create a spark of novelty that solidifies a memorable brand impression with a customer.
  
  
• It speaks to users on an emotional level: Financial decisions may always seem rational and based on efficiency, but they are also driven by emotion and relations. For example, a survey on personal finance carried out in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia found that young generations respond better to prompts that are fun and don’t make them feel guilty⁴ when it comes to budgeting.

Gamification can help fintech and banking apps build positive financial behaviors by rewarding specific actions – for example, frequent deposits. And rewards become a key element here, because it’s what reinforces repeated engagement. 

To make the most out of rewards and increase loyalty and engagement, many banks and financial institutions have created their loyalty programs. However, today the majority of customers are not satisfied with what they get¹. 

Taking gamification further: Rewarded gaming and finance

In its Banking Consumer Study 2025, Accenture interviewed 49,300 banking customers across 39 countries and asked them what factors would turn them from regular customers to advocates. The four most cited factors were the following:

• Trust and transparency
• Personalization
• Smooth and delightful experience
• Rewards

Looking more closely at rewards, 60% of banking customers shared that they would like relationship-based rewards, but only 45% are satisfied with the rewards they get. 

This gap is a valuable one, and leveraging something like rewarded gaming can really make a difference. 

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What is rewarded gaming?

While gamification and rewarded gaming aren't the same thing, they draw on the same underlying principle: borrowing the engaging mechanics of games to drive better outcomes in a non-gaming app. 

Where gamification adds game-like features (streaks, badges, progress bars), rewarded gaming lets your customers actually play mobile games within your app and earn real rewards for doing so – turning play itself into a new engagement and revenue channel.

Streaks and badges keep score, but rewarded gaming pays out. Members aren't just earning recognition for logging in; they're earning something with real value for playing. That's a much stronger reason to come back tomorrow – Anthony Ortolan, Senior Business Development Manager for LoyaltyPlay

Here’s why that matters for companies operating in the financial industry today: 

💰 Fintech and neobanks are fighting on two fronts: engaging and retaining users, and finding new ways to monetize the app. In this context, a rewarded gaming layer can work both as a way to improve fintech app engagement rates, session frequency, and strengthen their monetization strategy. In fact, every time a user interacts with the offerwall, this translates into direct revenue for the app.  

🏦 Banks and financial institutions, on the other hand, already have an established loyalty program in most cases. What they're missing is a way to make it stand out. Here, rewarded gaming works as a layer on top of the existing program, giving banks a way to diversify their rewards mix. And because these rewards are typically partner-funded, banks can reinvest that value directly into their members rather than absorbing the cost themselves. The goal here is engagement: getting members to interact with the app more, and take more in-app actions that move digital banking KPIs, like deposits or investments.

👀 Related reading: How mobile apps can capture untapped revenue potential

3 benefits of rewarded gaming for finance apps

Whether you’re looking to monetize your fintech app or improve session frequency for your banking app, rewarded gaming can be layered directly onto your loyalty program, allowing you to narrow the gap between desired and actual rewards. Your app gets closer to what people want: a loyalty program that rewards them on a regular basis rather than occasionally. And this has several benefits for your app. 

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1. Increased engagement

Adding a rewarded gaming layer to your app means that your customers will want to open the app more frequently to earn and redeem rewards. This has a direct effect on engagement: an app that was once purely transactional, now becomes an app that users check regularly to play, earn, and redeem rewards. 

For example, after integrating LoyaltyPlay – Mistplay’s rewarded gaming hub – Klink Finance saw a strong increase in fintech app engagement, followed by a steep increase in ARPDAU:

• 200% ARPDAU uplift
• 32.5% increase in offer completions
• 35% increase in incremental revenue

2. Diversification of the rewards ecosystem

In a competitive environment where every finance and fintech company has its own loyalty program offering traditional rewards, standing out becomes essential. Rewarded gaming gives your program a differentiator, without many additional costs. Moreover, adding rewards that people need to earn has an interesting psychological effect: your users will value them more than the points they accumulate passively, resulting in higher redemption rates.

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3. An additional (partner-funded) revenue stream 

Lastly, integrating a third-party offerwall also introduces an additional revenue stream to your app ecosystem. Each time a user engages with a partner offer, this activity translates into ad revenue or affiliate payouts from the partners, bringing in a steady flow of additional revenue.

Gaming offers function as a new funding source for rewards programs within finance apps. Publishers can choose to pass back up to 100% of the revenue to users to boost the value of the ecosystem. Members then have greater balances to apply to shopping, cashback, or travel offers that perpetuate the rewards flywheel. – Anthony Ortolan, Senior Business Development Manager for LoyaltyPlay

👀 Learn more about this here: Why it’s time for fintech apps to embrace offerwalls 

Best practices for using gamification & rewarded gaming in fintech

If your finance company is looking to add gamification or rewarded gaming to your owned channels and app ecosystem, there are a few best practices that can help you optimize for engagement. 

Anthony Ortolan, Senior Business Development Manager for LoyaltyPlay, has over a decade of sales and ad tech experience across mobile gaming, e-commerce, and loyalty, and here are some of his best practices:

• Use different types of communication to engage users between transactional moments: Sometimes customers need a little nudge to remind them of the rewards inside your app. Making wise use of push notifications, emails, and SMS can help you increase in-app visits and engagement.
  
  
• Feature games alongside other offers: Having a varied mix of offers allows you to capture different customer personas. In this way, you make sure that there is something relevant for everyone, increasing the chances of engagement.
  
  
• Offer first-time bonuses or increased rewards during holidays: Giving out bigger rewards early on and during special occasions is a great way to show your customers that you value the relationship with them. This can lead to increased customer loyalty over time. 

Make the most out of your finance app’s engagement with LoyaltyPlay

Gamification and rewarded gaming have real power in fintech, but not every gamified product engagement tool for fintech apps is built the same way.

LoyaltyPlay, Mistplay’s gaming reward hub, layers onto your existing ecosystem and allows your users to earn rewards by playing a curated selection of mobile games. Here's what makes LoyaltyPlay specifically suited to power improve engagement for finance and fintech apps: 

• Partner-funded rewards: Mistplay funds every reward, so your budget stays untouched. This kind of partner-funded reward has been shown to drive up to 54% re-engagement among lapsed customers, turning a dormant segment of your user base into an active one again.
  
  
• A self-funding revenue loop: Every time a member installs a game through your app, that action generates CPI-based revenue for you. This creates a loyalty loop that pays for itself: the more members play, the more you can reward them, and the more reason they have to keep coming back.
  
  
• Burning, not just stacking, rewards: LoyaltyPlay is designed to give members frequent moments to redeem what they've earned, whether that's a micro-deposit into a savings goal or a boost applied toward a fee. Keeping rewards in motion is what keeps members coming back.

Want to see how LoyaltyPlay's rewarded gaming hub can turn your finance app frequency from a monthly transactional visit into a daily habit? Reach out to us today to get started.

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Sources:

1. Accenture, Banking Consumer Study 2025
2. AmplifAI, 50+ Gamification Statistics You Need to Know in 2026, April 2026
3. Statista, Number of fintechs worldwide from 2008 to 2025, by region, January 2026
4. Lai, K. P., & Langley, P. (2024). Playful finance: Gamification and intermediation in FinTech economies. Geoforum, 151, 103848

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