Best Mobile Payment Apps: How Do They Rank?

Mobile technology and apps are fast becoming popular for a range of services, from shopping to social networking and reading to navigation. A recent survey by Fiserv, data from which was published in the Credit Union Journal, said 40 percent of the U.S. adult population used mobile banking in one form or another, and the number climbed to over 75 percent when considering millennials alone.

With such high proportion of mobile banking users, which is only going to increase, it is imperative for banks to offer apps for their services.

As of June 30, 2016, over $20 trillion worth of total assets was held by the top 61 banks and credit unions in the U.S. and Canada (the first credit union makes an appearance only at No. 33 on the list, while the second finds itself in the 46th place), according to data compiled by relbanks and USA Credit Unions. All of them have apps for both Android and iOS for the convenience of their customers.

But like with everything else, there are bound to be some better than the others. So which are those?

Application Resource Center, the research subsidiary of digital experience testing company Applause, analyzed 10 million star ratings and 3 million text reviews of the 90 mobile payment apps that included the top 61 banks and credit unions, as well as the top 29 mobile payment apps. The ARC rankings include 53 U.S. financial institutions and eight Canadian, and all the 90 apps are ranked by the weighted average of their Android and iOS user reviews and ratings.

Chase Mobile came out on top, with an average rating of 81.8 on a scale of 100. It was also one of the only two banking apps to have a weighted average score of over 70, the other being Capital One Mobile. The overall average score of more than 30 million apps crawled by Applause Mobile Sentiment Analysis (data from which was used for this study) is 67.3, while U.S. banks and credit unions had a combined weighted average of 45.1.

Payment apps, on the other hand, performed much better, with a combined weighted average of 61.1. Four apps had a score of over 70, led by Capital One Wallet (79.2) and Samsung Pay (74).

Some banking apps, such as that of Goldman Sachs, were not included in the list since they didn’t meet ARC’s criterion of a minimum of 100 combined text reviews. Similarly, mobile payment apps without 1,000 combined reviews were not qualified, removing services like PayPal Prepaid, Chase Mobile Checkout and MasterCard’s Masterpass from the list. Apple Pay, which doesn’t allow its users to leave any feedback or to rate it, was disqualified automatically.