Competing with neobank marketers in 2026: The race to attract Gen Z

The rise of neobanks has reshaped the competitive landscape of financial services in the US and globally – especially when it comes to digitally native Gen Z consumers. Seamless app design, low or no fees, real-time notifications, and social marketing continue to help challenger banks acquire younger customers at speed, leaving traditional banks struggling to keep pace.

In the battle for share of wallet, where does this leave the major players? Will competition intensify for established banks and fintechs looking to engage Gen Z? Or are new opportunities emerging for brands willing to rethink their strategy?

With an estimated $333.4 billion at stake this year, it’s a critical turning point that will take three keys to address: loyalty, purpose, and personalized incentives.

Neobanks have nailed acquisition. Rapid onboarding, intuitive UX, free tools, and financial incentives like sign-up bonuses all deliver rational benefits that meet Gen Z’s expectations for instant gratification and simplicity.

The catch? Strong acquisition rates don’t translate to longer-term loyalty.

Gen Z is notorious for switching brands that no longer serve them. This makes relevance the key to retention.

Here are three focus areas to help banks achieve that goal.

In financial services, trust is one of the most valuable currencies – especially when it comes to Gen Z. Education and thought leadership establish authority, credibility, and positioning as a partner rather than a provider.

Gen Z stereotypes paint a picture of bad spending habits, but the data tells a different story: they’re often more proactive about budgeting and saving than some older generations. Many of them actively seek financial advice, consulting their families or using platforms like YouTube and TikTok to improve their financial literacy.

Recognizing this, SoFi recently made a smart investment of its own: appointing content creator and former Wall Street trader Vivian Tu as its first Chief of Financial Empowerment.

With millions of followers across platforms under the handle @YourRichBFF, Tu bridges the gap between institutional expertise, culturally relevant financial education, and engaging, digestible content with inherent virality.

This all makes financial empowerment feel accessible rather than intimidating – and with only 54% of Americans expressing financial confidence, it sets up SoFi as the right partner to build that confidence, giving them a direct route to new account growth.

Top takeaway for banks and fintechs:
Education and empowerment considerations are both powerful growth levers and competitive essentials. Brands that invest in financial education that’s credible, digestible, enjoyable, and genuinely useful create something you can’t buy: emotional equity that builds loyalty.

To attract Gen Z, financial institutions need to be clear on their purpose and social responsibilities: value alignment is critical for acquisition and retention.

Neobanks are starting to meet these needs at a more granular level, embedding mental-health-aware messaging and factoring community-driven finance into rewards and guidance. The key is making this feel part of a cohesive whole, rather than an inauthentic add-on.

This presents a major opportunity for established banks with deep-rooted and widely communicated values: they have the right foundation to engage Gen Z, as well as the scale to drive impact.

A great example of this is Nationwide, the UK’s largest building society. Owned by its members, Nationwide has always been known for uncompromisingly focusing on the needs of its customers, rather than shareholders. Its purpose-driven stance isn’t a brand motto – this underpins its entire existence and operation.

This was brought to life with their “NationFried on Tour” campaign, where food trucks turned up at universities across the UK to give away free breakfasts and merchandise to thousands of students away from home. This activation meaningfully aligned with Nationwide’s commitment to supporting customers through major life milestones – and neatly brought attention to the perks of their FlexStudent bank account.

Top takeaway for banks and fintechs:
Connecting your business, services, and products back to a greater purpose is the first step to connecting with Gen Z. Purpose-led engagement is a huge differentiator that has become table stakes for neobanks, but established institutions have the resources and reach to take this even further. Layering in rewards that feel community-oriented and personally meaningful will be critical for solidifying that connection and building lifetime value.

Established financial institutions bring decades of experience with managing customer lifetime value. While the demands of a new target market, the tools needed to reach them, and the competitive landscape are in constant flux, the objective hasn’t changed: deepen relationships over time.

This is where it pays to get creative with your approach.

When long-standing Italian bank Banca di Asti wanted to reposition itself to win over Gen Z, they turned to TLC for their strategic renewal journey. With a strong heritage dating back to 1842, they wanted to show their capacity for innovation and adaptation.

Together, we built a campaign offering account holders a substantial €300 in credits to spend on a wide range of activities designed for them. By combining deep behavioral insights with highly personalized, experiential rewards, our client achieved:

• A 65% increase in new account openings
• A 96% retention rate

The success of this campaign led to a second phase that beat target account openings by 16%, and a third phase is now underway. Read the full story here.

Top takeaway for banks and fintechs:
Gen Z customers across the world value experiences over material things. And on top of this, money matters carry emotional weight for this generation – a fact that neobanks are acutely aware of and responding to. With this in mind, the sweet spot for incentives is high perceived value rewards with high emotional relevance. Get this right, and they’ll outperform every other acquisition and retention tactic, including cash incentives.

Competing with neobanks is something that established institutions have been tackling for years, but they have an underleveraged advantage: rich data.

Marketing leaders know that personalization is critical, but executing it at scale can be challenging, from costs to logistics.

Pairing historical data with the right rewards infrastructure solves this problem. Experience-led rewards already create emotional connections with customers; when transaction and behavioral data is applied to offer experiences that feel highly personal, timely, and valuable, it changes the game and the battle for attention.

Our approach to competing in disruptive markets is built on a simple but powerful framework: the Loyalty Benefits Trinity. To attract, engage, and retain customers, financial services brands must deliver value across three categories:

• Rational benefits: Target the head
  For Gen Z, this could look like: Providing practical, accessible, and cost-free tools and education that simplify financial decision-making and improve financial literacy.
• Financial benefits: Appeal to the pocket
  For Gen Z, this could look like: Offering competitive interest rates or rewards that genuinely offset financial pressures and give their wallets some breathing space.
• Emotional benefits: Capture the heart
  For Gen Z, this could look like: Differentiating your brand with hyper-personalized rewards that reflect life stage, interests, and values, driven by data and brought to life through a connected benefits ecosystem.