GMBAR // Autumn 2026 // Twelfth editionThe German Mobile Banking App Review.
Tracking Germany's leading banking apps since 2020; this edition tests 25 of them. In partnership with Visa. Used by product and strategy teams across European retail banking. The Autumn 2026 edition is out now.
The headline finding.
Germany's banking apps are no longer only adding features. Three numbers from the Autumn 2026 edition.
112
Feature gap between the most and the least complete app, now at its widest. It was 50 in 2020.
11
Features switched off across five banks' apps since the spring. More is no longer the only answer.
3.5x
Fintechs ship more than three and a half times as many iOS updates as traditional banks: around 52 a year against 14 (2026, estimated).
“This edition asks a different question: which banks turn all that functionality into an experience customers can find, use and trust?”
What’s in the report.
More than 170 features, tested across 25 apps in 13 categories, on iOS and Android.
Section 01The market numbers.
App store ratings and downloads, release cadence, log-in times and the oldest phones each app still supports. Where the market is maturing and where it isn't.
Section 02The feature view.
Six years of feature growth, the category leaders, where fintechs and traditional banks each over-index, strategic clusters, how fast new features spread and the table stakes some banks still lack.
Section 03The experience frontier.
Fewer features and paid extras, engagement and loyalty, security the customer can see, how Germany pays and the checkout changing hands, and personalisation against customisation, with global benchmarks from Santander and Klarna.
Section 04What comes next.
AI in German banking apps, the UK assistants moving from answering to acting, what the UK regulator calls good, the challengers arriving in Germany, and three priorities for the next six months.
Methodology in brief.
Our testers in Germany record every feature, hands-on on iOS and Android, each quarter, and we report twice a year. More than 170 features are grouped into 13 categories, and a feature counts when the customer can complete it from the app without a further log-in or re-entering their details. Each recorded feature is checked against public evidence (the bank's own help pages and announcements, store listings and release notes, and the wallet and payment scheme providers' lists), and banks review their own results before publication. App store ratings and release cadence come from public store data; log-in times from four timed log-ins per app on each platform.
Our 13 categories have been in use since 2024 and are applied to our data back to 2020, so the trend lines stay comparable. Where the evidence shows when a feature arrived or was withdrawn, we record it from that date, so every edition is measured the same way.
German Mobile Banking App Review
Tracking Germany's leading banking apps since 2020; this edition tests 25 of them. In partnership with Visa. Used by product and strategy teams across European retail banking. The Autumn 2026 edition is out now.
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