Unibanco

: initiatives to increase Gen Z’s registrations for an online debit card account

Abstract

The digital banking ecosystem is growing and dominated by a few market players. In Portugal, this holds as well, with Revolut and moey as front runners (Statista, 2022). This research identifies initiatives on how Unibanco, a Portuguese online bank, can increase its target customer base, Gen Z, with its online debit card account offering. The study analyzes three main areas that are essential to improve product offering and communication, and hence increase the conversion of Gen Z customers: 1. The sociodemographic characteristics of Gen Z; 2. Essential service value dimensions of Gen Z when choosing an online debit card provider that increase the likelihood to register; 3. The preferred banking functionalities of Gen Z when choosing an online debit card provider that increases the likelihood of registering. The hypotheses are formulated based on secondary research employing academic literature. Next, the primary research is based on 245 valid online survey responses from Gen Z Portuguese residents. Findings show that the target group of Unibanco are low-income students interested in activities like traveling, sports, and music. Besides validating that Gen Z places high importance on the six service value dimensions as outlined in this paper, the dimensions of security, transparency, reliability, and ease of use significantly increase Gen Z’s likelihood to register as a customer. Additionally, the study supports that Gen Z values all recommended product functionalities, except crypto trading. More particularly, the functionalities of fraud detection and reward systems positively influence Gen Z's likelihood of registering as an online debit card customer.

Date of Award	24 Jan 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rute Xavier (Supervisor)