Growth Loop: The 'Key' to Retaining and Expanding Customer Base in the Banking Industry

The wave of digital transformation has had a profound impact on the finance and banking sector. So, in the period 2026-2030, what model is suitable for the industry to continue maintaining sustainable growth?

In recent years, the finance and banking sector has witnessed significant shifts thanks to the wave of "digital transformation," the race to develop super apps, and efforts to increase presence on media and entertainment platforms to attract new users. However, precisely because this shift has occurred so rapidly and uniformly, these trends are gradually becoming minimum standards rather than competitive advantages. So, in the period 2026-2030, what model is suitable for the finance and banking industry to continue maintaining sustainable growth?

When the race to "buy" users reaches its limit.

According to the State Bank of Vietnam, over 87% of adults have payment accounts, and many banks process over 95% of transactions through digital channels. However, despite the high user growth, app retention remains low: Adjust's Q1/2025 report shows that the user retention rate for financial apps in Vietnam only reached 11% on the first day and dropped to 3% after 30 days. This indicates that despite rapid user growth, the digital growth of many banks still relies on "acquiring" new customers, rather than having a mechanism to sustainably fuel growth.

According to Adjust, the retention rate for financial and banking apps in Vietnam decreased significantly after the first day of app launch.

In recent years, to compete for new users, banks have not only invested heavily in digital infrastructure but have also waged a fierce and costly "presence battle" on television programs and entertainment events. However, these massive investments have mainly only resulted in an increase in new card openings. The bigger "problem" lies behind the scenes – how to keep customers engaged, returning, and using the app regularly instead of just registering and leaving.

Although many banks have developed super-apps with a range of features, the interaction challenge remains unresolved: low customer loyalty rates, limited value from existing customers, while young customers – the main user group – expect a personalized, seamless, and continuously value-added experience.

According to Mibrand, the majority of users currently only interact with basic services such as payments (85%) or money transfers (62%), while many other utilities remain untapped, making the need for a model that can trigger and sustain repeat usage behavior urgent.

According to Bain & Company's Elements of Value model, loyalty only forms when a bank taps into higher levels of value: habits - trust - ecosystem. This is also a common thread among high-growth banks worldwide , such as Nubank and DBS, where user behavior is linked in a loop: transaction - positive experience - return - spreading the word - creating new transactions - independent of short-term promotions or campaigns.

Growth Loop: The banking model to be built in the period 2026 - 2030

While banks still have to spend large budgets to attract app installs or new account openings, platforms like Shopee and TikTok grow using a Growth Loop: building content - interaction - transactions into a seamless journey that keeps users coming back daily because the ecosystem continuously creates value, forming a view-interaction-purchase-return loop that helps achieve natural growth at low cost.

Applying this model to banking, the focus shifts from the number of new account openings to attracting the right customers, triggering real transactions, increasing app usage frequency, and allowing that customer base to spread the word and bring in new customers. Once this cycle is established, key metrics such as customer retention, customer lifetime value (CLV), and daily active users (DAU/MAU) all increase, while marketing costs decrease significantly. Banking apps, which were previously just a "money-burning tool for growth," can become a genuine profit engine.

Livestreaming is gradually becoming a familiar interactive channel in the digital strategies of banks, playing a role in brand building, conveying product information, and increasing user engagement. As this format becomes more popular, the market is also beginning to look for ways to implement livestreaming to create a clearer impact on consumer behavior.

In this context, the Mega Live, Icon Live, Key Live, and Daily Live series, implemented by ACCESSTRADE in collaboration with VPBank, demonstrate the potential for expanding livestreaming by directly integrating offers into the shopping experience. Connecting content, offers, and transactions within the live session creates a watch-buy-cashback-return loop. This approach helps elevate livestreaming beyond its purely media role, transforming it into a consumer touchpoint, enabling banking applications to gradually become more deeply involved in users' daily shopping and entertainment journeys.

Among banks applying Cashback 2.0, MBBank and TPBank are rewarding customers based on online/offline spending within ACCESSTRADE's ecosystem of over 1,500 merchants. Instant cashback encourages customers to return to the app more frequently, fostering a spending habit linked to the app. Directly linking cashback to actual spending helps banks increase product usage frequency and extend customer lifetime value.

MBBank topped the ranking of the most used mobile banking applications in Vietnam in 2024 (according to Mibrand).

The Growth Loop is a mechanism for transforming "one-time customers" into "repeating customers" and ultimately "spreading customers." Even referral programs are being "upgraded." VPBank and MoMo have shifted from rewarding account opening to rewarding actual usage behavior such as transactions, payments, and spending within the ecosystem. This approach significantly improves user quality, reduces dropout rates after card opening, and sustainably increases DAU/MAU. This demonstrates that when the growth components – livestreaming, cashback, ecosystem, referrals – are connected into a single loop, banks can create real value, real growth, and significantly reduce marketing costs.

In the period of 2026-2030, when the market is saturated with digital transformation and "acquiring" new customers becomes increasingly expensive, the Growth Loop will become the core growth driver, helping banks not only attract users but also retain them, enriching their lifetime value and generating new customers.

Source: https://congthuong.vn/growth-loop-chia-khoa-giu-chan-mo-rong-khach-hang-nganh-ngan-hang-435545.html