Banking, Member Exclusive

HSBC’s Zing and how banking can learn to do cool and innovative better

  • With a modern UX and targeting a popular market, HSBC's new international money transfer app shows a lot of promise.
  • But it's what Zing -- and HSBC -- didn't do that points to a big opportunity for banks to provide something valuable to customers.
close

Email a Friend

HSBC’s Zing and how banking can learn to do cool and innovative better

A few years ago, I was chatting with Alex Jimenez, who was leading strategy at Zions Bank at the time. He said that most banks’ efforts to keep relevant basically amounted to innovation theater. Instead of trying to keep up with the new, cool things, he suggested that innovation really had to do with asking the right questions. I’ve been using that term ever since.

“Once you define the question really well, then you can brainstorm, and come up with and test ideas. I’ve seen a lot of groups define a question incorrectly that doesn’t solve the problem and what they end up doing fails. Spend a lot of time with a process that’s very specific in defining the question and then you can begin to innovate.”

Asking the right questions

So, last week, when HSBC announced a new app to send money internationally, my first thought went back to my discussion with Alex. 

What question was HSBC asking when it decided to build Zing? The answer feels like it would be something like who’s doing something really well and how do we do something similar?

Because the product just looks and feels like competitor Wise (10 million customers) and part of Revolut (38 million customers). It just feels derivative. 

But, hey, that may be enough. Let’s look.

A closer look at Zing


subscription wall for TS Pro

0 comments on “HSBC’s Zing and how banking can learn to do cool and innovative better”

10-Q, Member Exclusive

‘Payroll is one of the most direct and impactful entry points for embedded finance’: Green Dot’s Crystal Bryant-Minter on the firm’s embedded finance strategy

  • Green Dot's rapid! is wiring earned wage access and real-time payouts into Workday’s payroll and HCM systems.
  • Green Dot sees payroll and payouts not just as an end in themselves, but as the on-ramp to embedded finance at scale.
Sara Khairi | September 15, 2025
10-Q, Member Exclusive

What’s left in the shadows: The Oklahoma institution that grew by keeping its head down

  • In today’s 10Q edition: What’s left in the shadows, we shine a light on the less-talked-about publicly traded names in the industry that do their own thing but remain integral to the banking ecosystem.
  • One of these shadow giants is BOK Financial [BOKF]. Founded in 1910, this Oklahoma-born institution has spent more than a century weaving itself into the economic fabric of the Midwest and Southwest.
Sara Khairi | September 08, 2025
10-Q, Member Exclusive

Citizens sharpens its open banking edge with a new API design

  • Citizens Bank rebooted its open banking API this year, updating the framework for today’s needs.
  • Citizens’ Head of Product Management for Access & Delivery Channels unpacks the launch of the bank’s revamped open banking API framework and the problems it tackles.
Sara Khairi | September 03, 2025
10-Q, Member Exclusive

Chime, SoFi, Nubank: How three different roads are converging into one digital banking paradigm shift

  • The digital banking story in 2025 is a mix of triumph and tension. 
  • In 2024, talk in digital banking centered on neobanks facing higher rates, fading VC, and stiff competition. Mid-2025 shows the outcome: yes, but only a handful.
Sara Khairi | August 25, 2025
10-Q, Member Exclusive

How Coinbase is putting a crypto spin on old-school finance

  • Coinbase, once a Silicon Valley outsider pitching crypto as an alternative to the banking system, is now doing business with the very institutions it was supposed to 'disrupt'.
  • The roles are shifting: banks are moving closer to the chain, and Coinbase is evolving beyond being just a crypto trading platform.
Sara Khairi | August 11, 2025
More Articles