The competitive landscape of mobile banking is becoming more segmented

For stock trading, just look at the analysis reports from Golden Qilin’s analysts—authoritative, professional, timely, and comprehensive. Help you uncover high-potential themes and opportunities!

By our reporter Li Bing, and Xiang Yue

As listed banks continue to disclose their 2025 annual reports, mobile banking—an essential enabler for retail digital transformation—has become an important window into banks’ digital, and even intelligent, transformation. Operating metrics, service innovation, and strategic layout are the key observables.

Judging from the performance data already disclosed, mobile banking has completely shed its “supporting transaction channel” positioning and has risen to become a “super gateway” through which banks deliver digital finance and life services. Overall, mobile banking development and operations show a trend of “leading at the top, competition in layers, technology enabling, and deep ecosystem cultivation.”

A layered competitive landscape

In terms of tier distribution, the industry’s “the strong get stronger” characteristic is evident. State-owned big banks, backed by their massive customer bases and technology investments, occupy the leading position in the first tier of mobile banking business. By the end of 2025, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) had 630 million personal mobile banking customers, with mobile monthly active users (MAUs) exceeding 290 million—both remained first among peers. China Construction Bank had 441 million personal mobile banking asset customers, up 3.95% year over year. Bank of China’s personal mobile banking contracted customer count and monthly active customer count reached 313 million and 105 million, respectively—making it the bank’s transaction channel with the most active customers. Agricultural Bank of China had over 276 million personal mobile banking monthly active customers; within that, county-level mobile banking had 130 million monthly active customers. Leveraging its deep market cultivation advantage in county areas, it has solidified its leading position. Meanwhile, Bank of Communications had 57.41 million monthly active personal mobile banking customers.

Some joint-stock banks also show a growth momentum in mobile banking customer numbers. By the end of 2025, Ping An Pocket Bank App had 182 million registered users, up 4.7% from the end of 2024. Shanghai Pudong Development Bank’s contracted personal mobile banking customer count exceeded 93 million, with monthly active users exceeding 34 million, up 6.11%. Industrial Bank’s effective mobile banking customer count was 70.2167 million, up 11.83% year over year.

City commercial banks, rural commercial banks, and other regional banks form the “third tier,” pursuing differentiated development by leveraging local ecosystems. For example, by the end of 2025, Qingdao Bank had 5.5354 million existing personal mobile banking users, up 0.2270 million from the end of 2024; Zhengzhou Bank’s cumulative contracted personal mobile banking customers were 4.2718 million.

Lou Feipeng, a researcher at Bank of China Postal Savings, told Securities Daily reporters: Overall, state-owned big banks have huge mobile banking user scales but slower growth rates, and they focus more on ecosystem development and scenario integration. Joint-stock banks, by contrast, focus on differentiated competition and improve user activity through more refined operations. City commercial banks and rural commercial banks rely on regional advantages, deeply cultivate local life services, and treat mobile banking as their main customer-acquisition channel.

AI enables experience upgrades

Continuously iterating mobile banking functions, exploring various application scenarios, and improving service quality have become a routine measure for listed banks to build and refine mobile banking as a core service platform. Another notable change is that AI technology is becoming a core driving force, pushing services to leap from “actionable” to “conversational.” At the same time, mobile banking’s service boundaries are being thoroughly dismantled, blurring the line between financial and non-financial services. It is evolving into a “super App” that bundles local life services, further opening new growth points for banks’ business expansion.

For example, in 2025, ICBC promoted an intelligent interaction feature called “ICBC Xiao Zhi,” covering high-frequency scenarios such as transfers and wealth management. Postal Savings Bank’s mobile banking broke through a key technology for “end-to-end full-voice business handling,” exploring a new interaction experience focused on “service that finds you.” Bank of Communications’ personal mobile banking upgraded to version 10.0, launching an “AI Little Deer Assistant” feature, providing customers with intelligent services loaded in high-frequency scenarios. It also launched a “Culture and Tourism Special Section,” offering an intelligent travel plan generation tool to provide convenient, efficient companion-style services for customers’ trips.

For joint-stock banks, in 2025 Ping An Bank released the 8.0 version of the Ping An Pocket Bank App. It integrated high-frequency use scenarios such as life services and event/benefit entitlements, strengthening the capabilities of comprehensive account services and optimizing the user experience. It also leveraged generative artificial intelligence (AIGC) to assist in creating service content and improve customer experience through personalized interactions.

“The AI capability applications of leading mobile banking are moving from technology exploration toward scenario implementation. The main application directions include intelligent search, intelligent assistants, and intelligent recommendations. Intelligent agent services with the ability to take action, replacing traditional Q&A-style AI, is becoming a consensus in the industry.” Fang Ruixin, an expert at eKnow/Analysys Qianfan in financial industry consulting, said in an interview with Securities Daily reporters.

Fang Ruixin further said that AI provides a significant enabling effect to both personal mobile banking and enterprise mobile banking, but with different emphases. Personal mobile banking focuses on understanding user intent and handling requests quickly; therefore, naturalized interactions, embedded services, AI guidance, and customer service will become key priorities for future iterations. Enterprise mobile banking still needs to deeply understand enterprise business logic and address the pain points of business operations. Therefore, in future iterations, the focus should be on optimizing business processes, introducing ecosystems, enabling functions, and ensuring product availability, while the impact on interaction experience is relatively smaller.

“Currently, each bank’s personal mobile banking places greater emphasis on consumer finance and life scenario layout. The development trend shows platformization and ecosystemization, with a focus on improving user experience and activity, and integrating multiple functions such as payments, wealth management, lending, and life services.” Lou Feipeng believes that when banks use AI to improve mobile banking performance in the future, they should focus on three areas. First, rely on large-model technology to further improve service efficiency and the level of personalized service. Second, optimize frictionless experiences by using technologies such as biometric recognition to simplify users’ operating workflows. Third, strengthen intelligent scenario-based recommendations and provide precise services based on users’ behavioral data.

		Sina Statement: This message is republished from a partner media outlet of Sina. Sina.com publishes this article for the purpose of transmitting more information, and does not mean it agrees with its viewpoints or verifies the statements described. The content of the article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors act on this at their own risk.

A vast amount of information and precise analysis—available in the Sina Finance App

Editor in charge: Gao Jia