The boundaries between consumer brands and financial services are rapidly dissolving. Apple, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Walmart and Uber now offer digital wallets, stored value, credit, and even savings accounts. Though not technically banks, these brands are creating loyalty-driven ecosystems that hold consumer funds, deliver seamless payment solutions, and cultivate emotional connection. By integrating financial services, they expand their role in people’s daily lives, making spending, saving, and transferring money feel easier, smarter, and cooler than ever. This shift makes financial services more competitive and emotion-driven than ever.
For incumbent financial brands, the implications are profound. How can they maintain relevance when consumers are drawn to the seamless and relatable lifestyle fit of these brands? How can they unlock the power of emotion as the untapped business driver? Should they compete — or collaborate?
Below, we explore three key questions that can guide financial brands as they seek to retain and enrich customer relationships in this changing landscape.
How Can Banks Differentiate Their Value in an Age of Embedded Finance?
As consumer brands step into financial services, banks need to revisit their unique value proposition to clarify what they stand for and build a distinct, flexible emotional connection with their customers. Rather than rushing to offer similar products, financial brands should assess how they’re perceived in relation to competitors and adjacent categories—and then realign their brand and product truths with the emotional and behavioral shifts driving consumer choices.
Capital One exemplifies this approach through its human-plus-digital strategy. By creating Capital One Cafés, they meet customers in a comfortable, lifestyle-oriented space that blends financial services with a coffee-shop atmosphere. This unique setting enables Capital One to stand out, while its chatbot Eno adds a personalized digital layer to every interaction, making financial support feel accessible and friendly. Capital One’s approach goes beyond transactions to foster an emotional connection rooted in meaning and trust. By working to understand evolving consumer needs, Capital One turns emotion into equity, positioning itself as a brand that can flex and endure in a competitive ecosystem.
How Can We Leverage Data to Compete with Lifestyle Brands?
Data is essential for understanding consumer needs, but data alone doesn’t equal customer insight. In a world saturated with quantitative analysis, the brands that stand out are those that balance data with qualitative insights, understanding the motivations behind customer behavior. This mix allows banks to build a brand identity that resonates emotionally, creating a lasting impression that withstands fragmentation.
Bank of America demonstrates this balance. For nearly a decade, it has deliberately re-positioned itself for the human-era of banking, emphasizing empathy in both its messaging and services. Its virtual assistant Erica provides proactive financial insights based on data but also has met 42 million+ customers where they are emotionally with its proactive and personalized planning tools. By combining analytics with a genuine commitment to emotional connection, Bank of America roots its brand in customer needs and expectations. This human-centered strategy enriches customers lives strengthening trust and loyalty and drives real business results.
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Should We Partner with or Compete Against Consumer Brands?
As consumer brands build their financial ecosystems, banks face a strategic choice: compete with them or collaborate for mutual benefit. Developing a brand-driven partnership framework can help banks stand out because they identify the right partners and objectives for building equity that supports each brand’s unique identity.
Klarna and Apple offer a powerful example of partnership done right. Apple chose to work with Klarna, a leader in buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services, rather than expanding its own Apple Pay Later product. Klarna’s brand resonates with younger consumers, adding a cool, accessible payment option to Apple’s ecosystem, while Klarna’s new shopping app benefits from the credibility of being an official Apple retailer. This partnership allows both brands to reinforce their core, enhance their expanded services, and deepen their relevance and customer relationships.
Similarly, Zelle was developed through a partnership among seven major U.S. banks—a peer-to-peer payment platform to compete with challenger brands and services like Venmo and CashApp. Zelle connects each bank’s “walled gardens” to form a unified payment network, a flex crucial for business resilience, but also for brand relevance. Zelle’s easy-to-use interface and playful tone has broader appeal and builds emotional equity with consumers who value simplicity and immediacy and will then grow to believe the traditional banks can deliver those feelings and experiences too. The Klarna-Apple and Zelle partnerships illustrate how well-designed collaborations make all the involved brands more competitive, relevant, and more valuable to customers and the bottom line.
All to say, that relevance remains key to futureproofing one’s brand.
The future of finance is defined by seamless, emotionally engaging, embedded experiences, and brands that want to remain relevant must build services that foster real emotional connection. Investigating the above questions will help financial brands refine their strategies, invest in a blend of data-driven and qualitative research, and explore partnerships that deepen the right emotional equities to drive business results. Those who adapt with these strategies will lead in this new age of consumer-centered finance.