Belgium: most used banking apps 2017-2019

Belgian consumers were more likely to use the online banking apps from KBC on a daily basis than those from BNP Paribas Fortis, a first in three years. This estimate is possible through data tracked and provided by Airnow PLC. Based on monthly calculations of the daily active users (DAU), the KBC Mobile and KCB Touch apps reached the highest average DAU throughout the year. It was followed by the Easy Banking App from BNP Paribas Fortis and the ING Smart Banking app from ING Belgium. This should not come as a surprise, as these banks are the biggest of the country in terms of the number of offices. A notable absentee on the list, though, is Belfius Mobile. The app from the country's third-biggest bank Belfius was not provided due to technical issues.

Banking in Belgium: more offline than online?

These numbers do not give an immediate indication that online banking apps are popular in Belgium or not. There are signs, however, that Belgians tend to do more of their banking online. In 2018, 78 percent of the Belgian population declared to have used internet banking (either on desktop or mobile) at least once in the previous three months. Additionally, the bank office density in Belgium decreased in recent years. There were roughly 35 bank branches per 100,000 adults in 2017. The number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults in the Netherlands, however, reached a value of less than 11 in 2018. In this sense, bank offices were more frequent in Belgium's landscape than in the Netherlands.

Are banking apps among the most popular in Belgium?

Banking apps in Belgium works slightly differently than one might expect. Belgian banks recommend their customers to not use their own apps for anything else than checking a bank account or a credit transfer to another account. Payment functions are not supported. If customers want to use an app to pay for something, they instead recommend using specialized apps for B2C or P2P payments in Belgium. This, in a way, limited functionality might be why banking apps do not feature at all in, for example, a list of the most popular smartphone apps of Flemish teenagers in 2018.

Average number of daily active users (DAU) of selected banking apps in Belgium from 2017 to 2019

Characteristic	2017	2018	2019
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Release date

January 2020

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Region

Belgium

Survey time period

1 January 2017 to 31 December 2019

Supplementary notes

The numbers provided come from an app tracker, with numbers originally being supplied on a monthly basis. The annual numbers shown here are calculated: the downloads in each month of the years has been added together.

There are no rankings which show all online banking apps. The source, for example, only provides individual data per app. The nine here have been picked due to their media presence and overall market share in the country.

No numbers were provided for Belfius Mobile from Belfius Bank, one of Belgium's biggest banks, due to technical reasons. The source did not explain why these issues existed.

The source does not mention whether this concerns "first-time" downloads, or whether users deleted an app and downloaded it again.

All numbers includes use on iPhone, iPad and Android devices (smartphone and tablets). The numbers were originally split between iOS and Android, but have been added together for clarity.

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