During the next years banks are going to be investing huge sums in developing and improving their digital and mobile channels of interaction with their clients. The shift from physical communication to a digital one has been prepared and it has been evident especially in the first half of this decade with a great number of banks closing many of their branches and spending more in other ways to interact and serve their clients. During a poll conducted in December 2014 [1], 46% of banking executives cited that implementing a digital strategy ranked as the No. 1 priority for retail banks. Many reasons exist for this, but mostly due to the focus towards generation Y whose members are more familiar with doing everyday tasks online and on the go and to lower costs. For this reason banks want to create the best online experience possible for all their clients who want to use their digital and mobile applications. The meaning however of “the best experience possible” in an online banking application is still not clear.

A relevant concept in this area is gamification. Gamification has been used during the last years in various different areas like education, crowdsourcing, intra-company projects and many more to increase for example user engagement or educate. The potential relationship between gamification and online banking however, is still a mystery. A few banks (Commonwealth Bank of Australia, BBVA) have already released some prototypes using this concept after realizing its potential for their interaction with the public. Some (eg. City Singapore) have even combined their online systems with gamification and social media platforms to generate even more interest or used gamification to teach children about financial services (ODBC Bank of Singapore). Most banks though reject the assumption that gamification can influence positively the design of their digital channels, can’t see the benefits surpassing the cost or they just don’t consider it a priority. The question still exists: could gamification improve the customer experience in digital and mobile banking channels?

Although interacting with banks is a rather integral part of almost every adult’s life it is not something that many enjoy, on the contrary it is considered as a boring activity that just needs to be done. In a world that everything can be controlled and performed online, banks are trying to transform a repetitive action for everyone into a fun experience by linkages with social media, promotions and applications which change the way people think about their bank interactions. In this effort to provide a complete and holistic experience to the public, gamification could be another tool towards the transformation of people’s interactions with commercial banking institutes like it has done in other business, and not only, areas.

The proposed thesis has the goal to investigate if gamification can be used in a meaningful way from banks in order to improve the user experience of their clients in their digital and mobile channels, if yes how it can be used and if not, why, using an overview of the cases in banking that gamification has been implemented, cases outside banking that could apply to this case as well and theoretical cases and other relevant research.