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- 🏦 HSBC's $150M bet on Zing crashed
🏦 HSBC's $150M bet on Zing crashed
How Zing got crushed by Wise and Revolut within a year (a $150M failure)
Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
Today’s story is about how a fintech startup failed within 1 year despite being backed by HSBC. Let’s get to it! 🚀
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → Zing
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Built a “me-too” product
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Align innovation with core strategy
🔗 The Runway Insights → How to deal with an angry customer
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → iMotorbike raises $10M (Series A) led by Headline Asia to expand their regional growth
☠️ 1 Failed Startup: Zing
🚀 The Rise of Zing
🇬🇧 Launched by HSBC in January 2024, Zing was a mobile platform designed to make cross-border payments a breeze. It aimed to cater to UK-based customers who were flocking to fintech rivals like Revolut and Wise, offering lower transaction fees and a more user-friendly experience.
🤔 Why HSBC launched Zing?
Not wanting to disrupted — After realising fintech competitors like Revolut and Wise were gaining traction by offering lower transaction fees, better user experiences, and innovative financial products, HSBC was not gonna sit still.
Attract non-HSBC customers — Zing’s app was designed to target non-HSBC customers, expanding its reach beyond the bank's traditional customer base.
Enhance digital offerings — Zing complemented HSBC's existing Global Money product for its international Wealth and Personal Banking customers.
Modernise its image — HSBC hoped to rebrand itself as more innovative and digitally forward, appealing to younger customers who prefer mobile-first, seamless solutions over traditional banking.
The Problem — 🫠 International money transfers were often a hassle—hidden fees, slow processing times, and complex procedures.
The Solution — 🌎 By leveraging HSBC's extensive banking infrastructure, Zing provided a platform where users could manage multiple currencies, transfer funds internationally, and spend globally with ease.
Its biggest promise? Transparent fees and competitive rates.
Users could hold funds in over 20 currencies (with conversion fees as low as $0.20), send money internationally, and spend both in the UK and abroad using a multi-currency debit card.
💰 Unlike other corporate ventures, HSBC went all in on this venture. They poured a cool $150.5 million into Zing’s app development between July 2022 and December 2023.
🔥 At its peak, Zing had attracted around 30,000 customers by mid-2024 (6 months after launch in Jan 2024). The app was planning to expand into European markets, with initial plans to enter the Netherlands. Not just that, Zing also partnered with Visa in July 2024 to add a multi-currency debit card to its arsenal. |
👦🏻 Things were looking bright, and HSBC was feeling pretty confident about Zing's future as a proud parent.
📉 The Fall of Zing
… until it wasn’t.
Despite its promising start, Zing struggled with compliance issues and failed to keep up with the competition. While Zing was patting itself on the back for its 30,000+ users, Revolut and Wise saw 1.1 million and 203,000 downloads, respectively, during that period.
📌 Here’s what happened to Zing:
Following a strategic review of Zing within the HSBC Group and after careful consideration, we have made the decision to close Zing and integrate its underlying technology platform into HSBC.
🥧 Grabbing the pie from the market
Jan 2024 — HSBC launched Zing, targeting UK-based customers for cross-border payments.
Jun 2024 — 🔥 Attracted around 30,000 customers and was planning European expansion, with initial plans to enter the Netherlands market.
July 2024 — 💳 Partnered with Visa to launch multi-currency debit cards.
👯 A “me-too” product

Sep 2024 — 🙅🏻♂️ Georges Elhedery became CEO of HSBC and initiated a strategic review, leading to a focus on core business areas and cost-cutting measures.
That means no more bleeding was allowed as HSBC prioritised cost efficiency and operational improvements.
Why? Because HSBC was facing challenges from low interest rates, global economic complexities, and leadership changes (several senior executives left).
🌏 Besides, Zing was facing heavy compliance burden for cross-border payments.
This was also mentioned by Steve (Managing Director of Wise) that enabling cross-border payments is extremely challenging as it involves running a global banking network, strong treasury, localised compliance and efficient operations on the best infrastructure.
While HSBC spent 2 years building its infrastructure before launching Zing, Wise spent the last 14 years perfecting its infrastructure to send and receive money to 190+ countries at scale, often in seconds.
As a result, Zing, the abandoned child, became the first casualty due to the new direction from its parent company.
Jan 2025 — 🪓 HSBC announced the closure of Zing, citing compliance restructuring challenges and a strategic decision to exit non-core business lines.
Around 400 employees (mostly non-HSBC customer support staff) will be affected.
Zing customers will be informed of an alternative option to become bank customers of HSBC UK and use the Global Money proposition (subject to KYC checks).
Zing's journey from a promising fintech app to its untimely closure highlights the challenges traditional banks face when venturing into the fintech space.
📺 Writing about Zing’s story reminds me of another corporate venture (Hooq) which was launched by Singtel as the Netflix of Southeast Asia in 2015 but eventually failed because they couldn't find product-market fit.
🦄 Regardless of whether you’re backed by big guys or not, the market is a level playing field. If you can’t hit product-market fit, you’ll die. Sad, but true.
For startups, despite not having huge resources like corporate ventures, they could move faster, fail faster, learn faster, and still come out as a winner (i.e. Revolut, Wise).
Want to learn more about Zing’s downfall?
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Built a “me-too” product
Zing’s attempt to compete directly with Wise and Revolut was essentially a ‘me-too’ product, struggling to carve out a unique value proposition.
When Zing was launched in January 2024, Revolut claimed to have reached 45 million global retail customers, while Wise reported 11.4 million users as of September 2024.
That means the fintech B2C market was already very crowded with strong competitors.
🏃🏻♂️ Instead of providing differentiated value propositions to solve problems for users, Zing tried to play catch-up with Wise and Revolut which had been providing similar features for over a decade.
The result?:
HSBC’s existing users were confused as they didn’t know why they needed to download Zing app when Wise and Revolut were providing similar features.
The users of Wise and Revolut had no reason to switch to Zing app since they have been using them for so long (and fine with them).
New users didn’t know how Zing was different from Wise and Revolut, potentially leading to high CAC or churn.
In short, innovation for innovation’s sake doesn’t work.
Mistake 2: Innovation was disconnected from the core business
Management’s interest in building out Zing to mount a serious challenge to competitors has waned.
As shared by Ritesh Jain (former COO of HSBC), large traditional banks often make the most money from their premium services to clients.
When innovation requires too much capital (like Zing) to iterate toward PMF and compete with other competitors, it has direct conflicts with its own foundation.
📉 This is exactly what happened to Zing:
When Elhedery (originally HSBC’s CFO) was appointed as the new CEO in September 2024, the priorities changed from innovation to cost-cutting measures and operational improvements.
Nothing wrong with that.
This simply means startups often have the advantage as they are more nimble to move fast and innovate quickly without navigating conflicting revenue streams or legacy systems.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Don’t just copy-paste
🔪🔫 If you’re entering a crowded market, standing out isn’t optional — it’s survival. Copycat strategies work about as well as bringing a knife to a gunfight.
🌟 Key Takeaways:
🎯 Target an underserved niche
When going head-to-head with industry giants, avoid fighting for the same audience. Instead, dominate a smaller, underserved segment, and avoid competition.
For example, Payoneer targets freelancers and small businesses for international payments, offering tools like integrated billing. Similarly, Remitly focuses solely on remittances for immigrants, rather than trying to be a multi-purpose app like Revolut.
A good question to ask yourself is this, “Who’s being left out by your competitors and why?”
Find those audience, understand their day-to-day life, challenges, and come up with differentiated value propositions to the audience.
😍 Build emotional loyalty (not just features)
People switch products for emotional reasons as much as functional ones. Wise leans into transparency, while Revolut makes finances feel sleek and futuristic.
For example, Monzo (another fintech startup) built a cult following by being radically user-friendly and transparent. Users love the app’s notifications, community forums, and clear spending summaries.
Be obsessed with every single detail. Develop a brand that resonates. Design your UX, messaging, and visuals to evoke emotion and trust.
Lesson 2: Align innovation with core strategy
Zing was disconnected from HSBC’s broader business goals and became collateral damage when priorities shifted.
🏦 One call from HSBC’s management to shut down Zing, and Zing was dead.
🌟 Key Takeaways:
🙌🏻 Secure long-term leadership commitment before launching
Innovative projects need a champion at the leadership level to navigate inevitable bumps. Without executive buy-in, projects like Zing become expendable during strategic shifts.
For example, Apple’s Steve Jobs famously championed the iPhone, ensuring its success despite scepticism. In contrast, Zing lacked long-term commitment from HSBC’s leadership.
🤝🏻 Leverage partnerships instead of going solo
Rather than building a standalone product from scratch, traditional players can collaborate with established fintechs.
For example, instead of spending 2 years to build the whole infrastructure and launch Zing, HSBC could’ve partnered with Wise or Revolut to offer co-branded services, leveraging their existing infrastructure and reputation.
Lesson 3: Timing matters more than you think
Launching a fintech product at the wrong time can spell disaster, no matter how innovative the idea is. Timing influences market adoption, regulatory readiness, and competitive dynamics.
A few years ago, I launched Staq (fintech startup) to help digital lenders access and aggregate financial data (i.e. banking/accounting data & credit reports) from SMEs. When we thought the timing was right, the market gave us a slap in the face.
Digital lenders didn’t have the infrastructure to support our product
SMEs in SEA were not open to share their financial data
Yes, Staq failed terribly. And yes, timing matters more than you think.
🌟 Key Takeaways:
🌊 Don’t enter a crowded market without a strong differentiator
Entering an oversaturated market without a significant edge is an uphill battle.
Identify gaps in the market, such as underserved geographies or unaddressed customer pain points before building.
🌏 Economic context shapes adoption rates
The economic climate affects how much risk customers are willing to take on new financial products. In times of uncertainty, customers often stick with trusted brands rather than exploring new options.
HSBC could have introduced Zing as a complementary service rather than a standalone brand, leveraging existing customer trust to drive adoption.
🔗 The Runway Insights
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar
iMotorbike raises $10M (Series A) led by Headline Asia to expand their regional growth (Link)
uHoo raises $3.7M led by Wavemaker Ventures to accelerate growth in sustainable building solutions (Link)
SignalPlus secures $11M (Series B) from AppWorks and OKX Ventures to accelerate crypto derivatives innovation (Link)
Medusa, an Indian craft beer brand, raises $6.5M (Series A) for expansion (Link)
Banyu raises $1.25M from Intudo to grow seaweed farming in Indonesia (Link)
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That’s all for today
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See you again next week.
- Admond
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