This time last year, Nuno Matos, the then chief executive officer of HSBC’s global wealth and personal banking business, said that the bank would “attack” the worldwide retail payments market with the launch of Zing.
Matos said at the time: “Zing has a global ambition. We want to establish ourselves as a global platform for international payments, which ties perfectly with our international payments strategy for HSBC and you should see us very soon in Asia, in the Middle East and in EU markets.
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“It’s a bold move for us. This is HSBC playing outside of its traditional perimeter of customers, and really attacking, if you want, of taking advantage of a contingent, which is big, is growing, looks like us, and it’s here for us.”
Zing championed by Nuno Matos-the next ANZ CEO
Exactly 12 months after launch, HSBC has pulled the plug on Zing. In the process, HSBC has burnt through an estimated $150m in its failed attempt to challenge fintech giants like Wise and Revolut in cross-border payments.
In August last year, HSBC announced that Matos was to leave HSBC. The Zing failure has not however had any noticeable impact on his career. It was announced last month that he will become the new CEO of ANZ, effective July this year.
The ambition with Zing was clear: create a cutting-edge app with low fees and sleek functionality to capture a share of the booming international payments market. In 2024, $503trn in cross-border payments were made, underscoring the vast potential of this space. However, Zing’s journey has become a cautionary tale about why traditional banks struggle to innovate effectively, according to GlobalData, publishers of EPI.
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By GlobalDataJoanne Kumire, Lead Banking and Payments Analyst at GlobalData, said: “The app’s concept may have been sound, but its execution was flawed from the start. Existing customers were forced to undergo re-KYC, an unnecessary hurdle. The product itself was incomplete, failing to offer meaningful differentiation from Wise or Revolut.
“Worst of all, HSBC spent over three years developing Zing before engaging with real users, sinking more than $150m before generating any revenue. In contrast, Wise and Revolut had already captured the market by rapidly iterating their platforms, expanding globally, and building deep customer loyalty.”
HSBC’s cultural and structural challenges
The underlying problem wasn’t HSBC’s lack of talent or resources, it was the cultural and structural challenges that plague many large banks. Innovation at scale requires speed, adaptability, and a willingness to experiment, traits that traditional financial institutions often struggle to embody.
Kumire added: “There are valuable lessons to be learned from Zing’s failure that banks must internalise to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive financial landscape. Banks need to prioritise moving quickly and gathering user feedback early in the process to guide development. Additionally, excessive spending should be avoided until there is clear evidence of product-market fit, and in many cases, partnering with experienced providers may be far more effective than attempting to build everything in-house.”
Kumire concluded: “The future of such propositions lies in a more agile, customer-centric approach. Success will require banks to adopt the more entrepreneurial mindset of fintechs, where speed, experimentation and responsiveness takes precedence over rigid planning and internal processes. As cross-border payments continue to grow exponentially, those who can marry innovation with execution will be the ones who redefine the market. The future of banking innovation will be defined not by who builds it first, but by who delivers the best solution, whether independently or through collaboration.”
