Brazilians downloaded 17.9 million digital banking and/or digital wallet apps in September, according to a monthly report from the Bank of America (BofA). This volume is 11.8% lower than the previous month when apps of this type were downloaded 20.3 million times. This is the smallest number of downloads since December 2020.
Among the neo banks, the most downloaded apps were Nubank (2.9 million), Banco Pan (1.3 million), and C6 Bank (1.2 million). Among the digital wallets, PicPay (1.5 million), Bitz (1.1 million), and Mercado Pago (1.1 million) led the ranking.
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The report also shows that for the first time since January 2015, the industry recorded a drop in the number of monthly active users. The only digital banks among the top 10 to grow their active user base in September were Nubank (35.4 million), Inter (8.4 million) and C6 (7.9 million).
The decrease in active users was also observed among traditional banks: Caixa Tem (41.9 million active users in September) and Itaú (14.2 million), the two with the highest number of users, recorded an 11% drop in active users.
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Downloads of apps from brokerage and investment platforms also went down last month, dropping from 2.7 million in August to 2.1 million in September. The BTG+ app recorded less than 200,000 downloads in the month, against an average of 1 million monthly downloads since June.
XP Investimentos‘ app had 400,000 downloads, against an average of 700,000 per month since June. The most downloaded investment platforms were Nu Investimentos, from Nubank, and Modal, with more than 550,000 downloads each.
Among large bank apps, downloads were down from 7.3 million in August to 6.5 million in September. The biggest drop was for the Caixa Econômica Federal app (1.2 million versus 1.5 million in August) and Caixa Tem (966,000 versus 1.1 million in August), in part because the Federal Government suspended the emergency aid (coronavoucher).
The most downloaded apps from traditional banks in September were Banco do Brasil (1.5 million), Caixa (1.2 million), and Santander (1 million).
