Key stat: Finance apps retain 17.6% of users 30 days after download, the highest rate of any industry in North America and nearly 4 times that of shopping apps (4.51%), according to a March report from Airship.

Beyond the chart:

• Finance apps stay sticky because the phone has become the primary teller window. Sixty percent of adults aged 18-24 and 62% of those 25-34 mainly use a mobile app to interact with their bank, according to Fico.
• Meanwhile, lower-utility apps lose users when the experience frays. Even among quick-service loyalty members, app glitches (27%) and irrelevant offers (26%) rank among the top reasons people stop engaging, and 85% say saving money is what pulled them in to begin with, according to an Alchemer survey.

Use this chart: Drop this into a retention or app-strategy deck to benchmark your category against the field. Show it to product and growth leads to reset day-30 targets, and use it to argue that habit-forming utility, not acquisition spend alone, is what turns downloads into durable app value.

Related EMARKETER reports:

• Infopack: Customer Experience 2026 (EMARKETER subscription required)
• US Mobile Banking Emerging Features Benchmark 2025 (EMARKETER subscription required)

Methodology: Airship's data is derived by analyzing customer data in aggregate of apps with at least 100,000 monthly active users and app category + region cohorts with more than 5,000,000 monthly active users. That group includes approximately 1.1B devices across 11 categories. The data includes information collected monthly. Benchmarks are based on an average by quarter for each category + region cohort. Sample size among categories & regions may vary. All data collection and analysis procedures strictly adhered to privacy regulations and ethical standards, with personal information anonymized and findings aggregated to maintain confidentiality and integrity.