We had a post in the queue scheduled for October 11 on this very topic:
Dopamine: "Brazil’s neo banks embrace games theory"
From EuroMoney, October 10:
Digital banks look to online games to help drive retention.
Digital banks in Brazil are beginning to introduce gamification to customer accounts to boost activation rates as the industry’s battle moves to winning market share from competitors.
In Brazil it is very common among the public to have four or five checking accounts.
"It’s kind of crazy,” says Marco Chain, banking director at Banco Pan in São Paulo. “So banks are really working to increase engagement and competing to be the primary account. At Pan, we are using the same techniques that mobile games use to drive engagement – creating both the aspect of fun and the challenge of evolving up ‘levels’.”
This focus on the gamification of digital banking is expected to increase as the market hits saturation and coverage of the Brazilian population means less space for organic expansion. In September, João Menin, chief executive of Banco Inter, told Euromoney that the challenge for his bank is moving beyond new customer acquisition.
“Instead of hunting, let’s go farm,” Menin told Euromoney. “The unbanked and the underbanked addressable market in Brazil has been tapped out – we and other players have already conquered this market....
And the headliner from the Columbia Law School CLS Blue Sky blog, October 20:
Stock trading has been gamified – transformed into a fun and at times casino-like game whose addictive potential captures the attention of consumers and revenues for brokerage firms. Given the widespread notoriety of meme stocks like AMC Entertainment, and Robinhood’s January 2021 halt of trading in GameStop shares,[1] this is not news to most people. In fact, the Securities Exchange Commission is soliciting comments on a proposed rule that would regulate this phenomenon.[2]
In various forms, gamification has spread to economic sectors as diverse as manufacturing, education, advertising, and healthcare. Thus far, however, little has been written about the gamification of banking – the topic of our recent article.[3] Our article analyzes relevant examples, posits a novel taxonomy of bank and fintech products and services that rely on features of gamification, predicts three waves of gamification in banking, and highlights potential benefits and risks of this development.
Playing games has been a popular pastime throughout history for a multitude of reasons, including entertainment, relaxation, community-building, and learning. In fact, play promotes well-being; its health impact is formidable.[4] Additionally, some research suggests that a high percentage of adults in the U.S. think that playing games about money, such as Monopoly, helps them learn the basics of finance.[5] Perhaps motivated by such findings, online firm Ally Bank rolled out an “augmented reality” Monopoly game in six U.S. cities during 2019.[6] More recently, in 2022, Truist – the 7th largest U.S. bank[7] – acquired fintech gamification app, Long Game Savings, Inc.[8] As Bill Rogers, Truist CEO, explained “[Long Game] utilizes behavioral economics, prize link savings and mobile gaming to motivate positive financial behaviors and drive new account growth and client retention.”[9]
Much earlier examples of banking’s gamification include PNC Bank’s 2008 “Punch the Pig” virtual wallet[10]or the BBVA Game.[11] However, as Rogers’ comments suggest, a recent confluence of factors is poised to accelerate banking’s gamification, with the likely result being mega financial platforms,[12] what we see as the third wave of banking’s gamification. Such factors include the widespread use of mobile-based banking applications; the findings of behavioral economics research on habit formation; the rise of big data, data analytics, and AI; and the explosive growth of cloud computing. Among these factors, cloud computing is playing a particularly important and powerful role. First, cloud computing technology has become so ubiquitous that few firms operate without some level of reliance on cloud-based infrastructure for data storage and management. Second, there has been an increasing migration to these mega-platforms by banks, fintechs, and other financial service firms . Third, cloud giants (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) have been particularly eager to enter partnerships with banks and trading exchanges. Finally, these cloud companies have moved into the gaming market through the acquisition of gaming-technology companies.
In envisioning mega financial platforms, we consider developments such as Microsoft’s recent acquisition of game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard,[13] Amazon’s gaming technology acquisitions,[14] and Google’s B2B gaming platform,[15] in combination with these giants’ increasingly transformational partnerships with banks.[16] For example, Microsoft entered a partnership with U.S. Bank in 2022, “embedd[ing] U.S. Bank payment capabilities across Microsoft platforms that businesses use regularly, making it easier for business customers to generate invoices and to send and receive payments.”[17] Hence, the three cloud-company giants have become important players in the video game industry and appear on course to fortify their gaming technology infrastructure and expertise. For example, Amazon GameSparks is a “fully managed game backend service that makes it easier…to build, optimize, and scale game backend features”[18] with capabilities such as “build[ing] and deploy[ing] game features.”[19] We anticipate gaming platforms will ultimately become a key service offering of the cloud giants, leading to the gamification of banking and much more....
....MUCH MORE
Related: many of the links referenced in the outro from the post immediately below, "Man Used $180 Million Check Fraud Scheme To Fund Incredible Dream Garage":
Want to Make Big Money? Engineer A Little Addiction Into Your Product
Engineering Addiction Into Your Product: Lessons From the ProfessionalsThe pros in this case being the gaming gurus at Gamasutra, November 13, 2017:
Compulsion Loops & Dopamine in Games and Gamification....
Engineer a Little Addiction Into Your Product - Redux
My work here is done.December 15
From Dilbert.com:
December 21
There are three more in the series, very topical.
