Neobanks’ size is exploding. An Insider Intelligence forecast shows that US neobanks will claim 39.1 million customers in 2025, or 14.5% of the population. That’s up from 9.5% in 2022.

Per our consumer survey, mobile banking factors heavily into neobanks’ appeal:

  • Nearly a third of mobile banking users have opened a neobank account (12.6%) or plan to open one in the next 12 months (17.7%).
  • And among current neobank account holders, 56.8% cited mobile features and experience as a reason for opening a neobank account. That’s second only to lack of fees (61.1%).

Note: Data below comes from Scientia, which operates the research platform FinTech Insights. Scientia provided information about incumbent banks’ feature sets for the study. For more information, see the end of this article.

Neobanks’ growth shows that offering even a small selection of in-demand features can drive adoption. FinTech Insights data shows that the top four US neobanks offered fewer features than many of their incumbent rivals.

But the number of features is just part of a winning experience. The top four neobanks beat incumbents on user experience, according to FinTech insights data. The lower the friction, the easier an app is to use—enabling customers to take full advantage of the mobile banking capabilities.

About the Study

This article is a teaser of Insider Intelligence’s two US banking benchmarks:

  • The fifth annual US Mobile Banking Emerging Features Benchmark stacks up the top 23 US banks according to whether they offer 42 of the year’s most important features to stand out—features that are rare, exciting, and strong in consumer demand, as validated by a consumer survey.
  • The second annual US Neobank Emerging Features Benchmark stacks up the top four US neobanks based on a similar list of features, plus seven neobank speciality features.

About Scientia

Insider Intelligence partnered with Scientia for data on which incumbent bank offered which features. Scientia operates the research platform FinTech Insights, which analyzes over 100 incumbent and entrant providers in the UK and the US, identifying what features they offer, providing videos of those features at work, and scoring the friction of capabilities.