Applause report ranks Chase mobile app top for payments and retail

Chase, the retail arm of JP Morgan Chase, tops the rankings published in a report on app quality in the financial services which was commissioned by the Application Resource Centre (ARC), a research group run by digital experience testing provider Applause. The report looks at the 61 largest US and Canadian banks, and 29 of the biggest apps in payments, collecting both quantitative data and customer feedback in the form of reviews. Applause’s Mobile Sentiment Analysis, a tool that indexes and analyses start ratings and reviews, carried out the statistical analysis that created the rankings. Each app’s final score of was the result of a weighted average between the iOS and Android rating. Apps that did not have a statistically significant sample of reviews or starred feedback were excluded from the rankings. Apple Pay, for example, does not allow users to leave feedback, and was not included. Chase Bank, the retail banking subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase, emerged as the undisputed winner of the ARC rankings. Its Chase Banking app, which also includes a payments feature, scored an 81.8 average based on over three hundred thousand reviews and over a million ratings– grabbing the top spot for both banking and payments apps. The report attributes the Chase Banking app’s success to a redesigned user interface and improvements to the Chase QuickPay feature. On average, payments fared better than mobile banking in terms of user satisfaction. Banking apps scored a dismal average 45.1 out of 100 in terms of user experience. Payments apps were significantly better, scoring a 61.1 on average. Both lag behind the cross-industry average for mobile applications, which the Mobile Sentiment Analysis calculates as 61.1  on average. According to the report, common complaints associated with poor ratings included: “Battery drainage, freezes, slow performance, blank screens, error messages, login issues, too frequent TOS agreements, broken check deposit experiences, updates that seemingly weren’t tested prior to release and overreaching permission requests.”