In the Philippines, consumers were found to be spending much more time on digital bank Tonik than any other finance app. This is according to a new report by Data.ai, an app analytics startup formerly known as App Annie, that looks at the most popular apps for Q1 2022.
The Top Apps and Games Market Pulse Rankings Q1 2022 put the Tonik mobile app at the top of the list, ranking it first in the Philippines among finance apps by time per user.
Time per user refers to the duration of a user session. A session begins when the user logs in to the app and lasts until they close the app or move it to the background for longer than 30 seconds. The next time the app is opened, the software counts a new session.
Session length is a primary measurement for user experience and engagement. However, what it considered to be a good session length varies between apps types and categories: gaming and video streaming apps, for example, would want longer sessions; purchase and delivery apps, on the other hand, would prefer shorter session time because a long stretches of time could possibly be an indication that the process is difficult and less likely to lead to sales.
After Tonik, digital banking and finance services platforms Komo and GCash took the second and third position. Komo is an exclusively digital banking service by incumbent EastWest Bank that allows customers to manage their finances and savings, make transfers, pay their bills, and more, and GCash is a mobile wallet, mobile payments and branchless banking service introduced in 2004 by Mynt, a joint venture between Globe Telecom, the Ant Group and Ayala Group of Companies. GCash is the number one mobile wallet in the Philippines with 60 million users and 29 million daily logins.
Top Philippines finance apps by time per user, Source: Top Apps and Games Market Pulse Rankings Q1 2022, Data.ai
Finance apps on the rise
2021 was a blockbuster year for finance apps with downloads leaping from 3.4 billion in 2018 to 5.9 billion in 2021, data from the Data.ai’s State of Mobile 2022 report show.
India saw one of the year’s biggest upswings, recording more than 1.1 billion finance apps downloads in 2021, more than double 2018’s figure.
Driven by the country’s large smartphone population and surging usage of digital payments, the growth propelled PhonePe, a digital payments and fintech company, at the top position of Data.ai’s India breakout app chart, a ranking of the country’s biggest year-on-year (YoY) growth in terms of downloads and monthly average users (MAU).
Finance apps downloads in India, Source: State of Mobile 2022, Data.ai
In addition to mobile payments, cryptocurrency apps also saw strong traction, becoming one of the most popular finance app subgenres across Asia-Pacific (APAC) in 2021.
In Australia, crypto exchanges CoinSpot (#1), Binance (#2), Crypto.com (#3), and Coinbase (#5) dominated the top five ranking of the strongest YoY downloads growth.
Similar trends were observed in South Korea (UpBit (#1), Bithump (#3) and Coinone (#4)), Singapore (Crypto.com (#3) and Coinhako (#5)), Thailand (Bitkub (#2) and Binance (#4)), the Philippines (Binance (#2) and Metamask (#3)), and Malaysia (Luno (#3) and Huobi (#5)).
2021 Ranking APAC Breakout Downloads, Source: State of Mobile 2022, Data.ai
Featured image credit: Edited from Unsplash
