Analyzing Business Insider’s Gen Z comments: As a Gen Z’er

I read a teaser to a report the other day on business insider called, “Banking & Payments for Gen Z Report: The winning strategies for attracting the next big opportunity — Generation Z”. I saw they included a few key takeaway from the report and I wanted to give gen z’s comment on them.

“Gen Z’s lack of financial services product adoption offers providers a long runway for growth. While two-thirds of Gen Zers have a bank account, many don’t yet use debit cards, haven’t aged into credit cards or loans, and aren’t responsible for the bulk of their own spending. As they navigate life transitions, like going to college or getting a first job, there’s ripe opportunity for providers to engage these customers.”

• First off, it’s true that we aren’t responsible for a bulk of our spending, if a company’s brand influences us, then we will convince our parents to buy it for us. On the other hand though, Gen Z does spend some of our own money through debit cards. Most of us work jobs and make money resulting in a little bit of disposable income. We usually don’t spend this income on massive purchases, but instead spend it on things like food and other cheap services and products. One other life transition that companies should get involved in is when we start driving. Once we start going to get food and shop with friends, our spending increases dramatically.

“Gen Z is more interested in digital payments products and services than any other generation. While adoption of mobile wallets has been tepid among the general population and P2P apps, like Venmo and Zelle, are just now gaining traction among older users, Gen Zers are diving in head first: Over half use digital wallets monthly, and over three-quarters use other digital payment apps or P2P apps in the same time frame.”

• Those who do not use their digital wallet for debit cards or plane tickets are missing out. It makes life so much easier just to double-click the power button on your phone to display all your cards. Some schools even allow for students to put their student ID card virtually in their apple wallet. This is where opportunity lies, if you can create a product that uses a card or ID of some sort, try to link it with the apple wallet. The wallet improves the customer experience by removing the friction of remembering all your cards and taking out your wallet. Use the wallet to your advantage and gen z will appreciate it.

“To attract, engage, and retain Gen Zers, financial services firms must develop products that are social, authentic, digital-native, and educational, offer value, and evolve over time. This combination, which emphasizes key attributes that Gen Zers value, serve as a roadmap for developing offerings with features that appeal to these users in both the short and long run.”

• BI research says that “firms must develop products that are social, authentic, digital-native, and educational, offer value, and evolve over time”. I see three key pieces that are important overall else, Authenticity, offer value, and evolve over time (adaptability). Authenticity because as a generation, we want to see a product be true to itself, no scams or anything like that, offer what you say you’re going to offer and stay on that path. Second of all, this service needs to have good value to us or we simply won’t use it. That’s pretty simple. Most importantly the product needs to adapt and continue to change and offer new services. We will get bored of a product that stays the same for more than a few months, so add new features or change the UI/UX. Look at Robinhood for example, they introduced cryptocurrencies on their platforms and recently tried to change the UI around.
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