From Fees to Value: How Digital Banking Can Monetize What Matters

The banking industry is putting immense pressure on digital channels to produce revenue, diversify revenue streams, and provide clear returns on investment—shifting the primary focus away from cutting costs and facilitating sales and marketing. To justify increasingly expensive digital investments, financial institutions are balancing the desire for easy profit and the generation of tangible returns. 

Today, monetization strategies must evolve beyond the narrow mindset that monetization means simply charging fees. This mindset focuses on what banks and credit unions can charge for, limiting the scope to short-term profits and making the customer’s interest a secondary concern. Successful digital banking will make money by solving a customer’s wants, needs, and problems. This report evaluates five mechanisms for monetizing digital banking based on their revenue potential, the effort required, the ROI timeline, the customer benefit, and the impact on customer trust.

Key questions discussed in this Digital Strategy & Experience report: 

• How can FIs generate revenue from digital banking beyond cost savings and marketing?
• How do fees affect consumer banking relationships?
• What monetization mechanisms should digital banking strategists employ?
• How can FIs balance customer-centric and bank-centric monetization strategies? 

Companies Mentioned: 

Brigit, Chase, Revolut, Western Union