Fintech App Marketing Guide: Acquire and Retain Users

The compliance team killed our campaign 47 minutes before launch.

"Guaranteed returns." Two words in our ad copy that I thought were just good marketing. Our legal team thought differently. They saw a potential SEC violation, a lawsuit waiting to happen, and an advertising claim that could cost us our license.

I was furious. We'd spent three weeks on that campaign. The creative was perfect. The targeting was dialed in. And now I was scrambling to rewrite everything because of two words.

That was my introduction to fintech marketing: the high-stakes intersection of aggressive growth and regulatory landmines. Get it right, and you're scaling one of the most valuable app categories in existence. Get it wrong, and you're explaining to regulators why your ads looked like investment advice.

Why Fintech Is Both the Best and Worst Category to Market

Best: 26,000+ fintech apps globally, and the category is still exploding. Users are abandoning traditional banks for digital alternatives. Payment apps are becoming daily habits. Investment apps turned a generation into stock traders. The opportunity is massive.

Worst: CACs of $50-100+ for qualified users. Brutal competition from well-funded startups and established banks. Regulatory scrutiny on every word you publish. KYC requirements that kill 60-70% of potential users during onboarding.

If you can navigate this complexity, the rewards are extraordinary. If you can't, you'll burn money faster than any other category allows.

The Compliance Reality Nobody Talks About

Here's what I've learned: don't fight compliance. Partner with them. The best fintech marketers I know have their legal team on speed dial. They build review time into their launch schedules. They understand that a delayed campaign beats a campaign that gets your app banned.

The Phrases That Will Kill Your Ads

• "Guaranteed returns" — you can't guarantee market performance
• "Risk-free investing" — all investing has risk
• "Make money fast" — sounds like a scam (because scams say this)
• "Better than traditional banks" — comparative claims need proof

The ads that work focus on features, not promises. "Invest with no minimum." "Start with $5." "Track your spending automatically." These are facts about your product, not predictions about outcomes.

How I Learned to Love KYC (And Stop Losing 70% of Users)

Know Your Customer requirements are the silent killer of fintech growth. Legally required, user-hostile, and devastating to conversion rates.

We used to lose 68% of users during KYC. They'd download the app, get excited about our product, and then hit a wall of document uploads, selfie verification, and address confirmation. By the time they finished—if they finished—they'd forgotten why they were excited.

Then we rebuilt the experience:

What Actually Reduced Drop-Off

1. Set expectations before they start. "Verification takes 2 minutes. Here's what you'll need." Users who know what's coming are less likely to abandon when they see it.
2. Use OCR everywhere. Don't make users type their license number—scan it. Don't make them type their address—pull it from their ID. Reduce typing, reduce friction, reduce abandonment.
3. Offer multiple paths. Some users have a passport, some have a driver's license, some have a state ID. The more options you give, the more users can complete verification with what they have.
4. Chase the abandoners. 40% of our incomplete KYCs finished when we sent a reminder email the next day. "You're almost done—just one more step." They'd been interrupted, not disinterested.
5. Support during verification. Real-time chat for users stuck in KYC. Sounds expensive—but each completed verification is worth $50+ in CAC. A support agent costs far less.

Our KYC completion rate went from 32% to 61%. Same regulatory requirements, completely different funnel design. Every percentage point improvement paid back immediately in lower effective CAC.

"KYC is required by law. Bad KYC experience is a choice. Every improvement to that flow is pure profit—users you've already paid to acquire, finally completing the journey."

The Referral Program That Changed Everything

I'll be honest: paid acquisition for fintech is brutal. High CPIs, strict targeting restrictions, creative limitations from compliance. We were struggling to scale profitably.

Then we doubled down on referrals.

Referrals in fintech work because money is inherently social. People talk about investments. They recommend apps that helped them. They share budgeting wins with friends. We just needed to make that sharing easier.

What Made Our Referral Program Work

• Meaningful incentives. $5 for a referral wasn't moving the needle. $25 worth of free stock did. In fintech, the incentive needs to feel like real money—because it is.
• Friction-free sharing. One tap to text a link. Pre-written message they could customize. Don't make users think about how to refer—do the work for them.
• Reward both sides. Referrer gets $25. Friend gets $25. Now both parties have incentive, and the friend doesn't feel like they're being sold.
• Anti-fraud measures. Fraudsters will absolutely try to game your referral program. Require funded accounts. Verify unique identities. We caught one person trying to refer themselves 40 times.

Our referral program now drives 35% of new users at a fraction of paid acquisition costs. Those users also retain better—friends hold friends accountable for financial apps.

The Channel Mix That Works (And The One That Burned Money)

TikTok: The Surprise Winner

I didn't expect TikTok to work for a financial app. It did—spectacularly. FinTok is real. Millions of young users are learning about investing, budgeting, and personal finance through short-form video. We partnered with creators who actually used our product, and the authenticity showed.

YouTube: Expensive But Valuable

Long-form finance content drives high-intent users. Someone who watches a 15-minute video about investing basics is more qualified than someone who sees a banner ad. CPI is higher. LTV is also higher. Net profitable.

LinkedIn: B2B Gold

If your fintech targets professionals—expense management, business payments, professional investing—LinkedIn is underrated. Higher CPC, but the audience quality is exceptional.

Programmatic: The Money Pit

We tried broad programmatic for months. High volume, low quality. Users would install, never fund, never return. We eventually restricted programmatic to retargeting only—chasing users who'd already shown intent. That worked. Cold programmatic didn't.

The Metrics That Actually Matter

Fintech has its own measurement language. Here's what I actually track:

• CAC to verified user: Not installs—verified, KYC-completed users. That's your real acquisition cost.
• Funding rate: What percentage of verified users deposit money? An unfunded account is nearly worthless.
• AUM per cohort: For investment apps, assets under management determines revenue. Track how each cohort's AUM grows over time.
• Transaction volume: For payment apps, total transacted value matters more than user counts.
• Payback period: How long until you recover CAC? Fintech often has long payback periods—make sure you can survive them.

Vanity metrics—installs, downloads, even active users—mislead in fintech. A million users who never fund their accounts is worth exactly zero. A hundred thousand users with real money in the app is a business.

What I'd Tell Myself Before That First Campaign Got Killed

Fintech marketing is harder than most categories. The regulations are real, the costs are high, and the funnel is brutal. But the upside—acquiring users who trust you with their money—is extraordinary.

Respect compliance. Obsess over KYC. Build referral into your product. Find channels where quality matters more than volume. And measure what actually drives revenue, not what looks good in reports.

Those two words—"guaranteed returns"—that almost launched in our campaign? They would have cost us far more than the three weeks we spent rewriting. The compliance team wasn't blocking growth. They were protecting it.

That's the fintech paradox: the constraints that feel like obstacles are actually guardrails. They force you to build sustainable growth instead of growth that collapses under regulatory scrutiny.

Learn to love the guardrails. They're what keeps this game going.