HSBC hits pause on Zing as compliance hurdles stall FinTech ambitions

By Puja Sharma

The abrupt pullback of HSBC’s digital money transfer service Zing sent ripples through the FinTech world last week — but for those following the slow clash between legacy banks and agile upstarts, it was anything but surprising.

Launched with much fanfare just six months ago, Zing was HSBC’s latest attempt to court digitally savvy, globally mobile customers. Designed to compete with the likes of Revolut, Wise, and PayPal in the booming cross-border payments market, the app promised low-cost transfers and a seamless user experience. But behind the curtain, it struggled to align HSBC’s internal compliance mechanisms with its startup-style ambitions.

Now, Zing has been sidelined for “strategic review,” with insiders citing compliance bottlenecks and lack of operational agility as key roadblocks. In essence, HSBC tried to act like a FinTech — but ended up reminding everyone it’s still a 150-year-old banking giant, grappling with legacy constraints.

Laurent Descout, CEO and co-founder of Neo, captured the sentiment precisely: “The plight of Zing is a common tale of traditional banks battling to keep up with the flexibility and innovation of their startup competitors. It is often the case that traditional banks are unable to match the appeal of FinTechs from faster onboarding and transparent fees with their digital app services.”

But Descout digs deeper — pointing not just to process inefficiencies but to a fundamental cultural mismatch:

“Traditional banks lack the ‘FinTech culture’ which is client and solution-driven. While FinTechs are putting in the hours and constantly redefining their services, it is not enough for traditional banks to think of a catchy name and a slick website. They must address issues of onboarding delays and poor client service if they want to succeed.”

HSBC’s Zing found itself hamstrung by the very structures FinTechs typically avoid. Reports suggest that internal politics and an overly risk-averse culture stalled innovation, even as the product attempted to mirror the speed and simplicity of its rivals. Zing’s struggles echo earlier experiments by traditional players, from JPMorgan’s short-lived digital bank Finn to RBS’s botched Bó — all attempts to look and feel like tech companies without behaving like one.

“With Zing, HSBC struggled with compliance restructuring and a strategic review,” Descout added. “Getting compliance teams right is essential. However, the practicality of doing so is not always straightforward. For legacy firms, it can be extremely difficult to balance changing regulations and innovative new products against existing compliance structures, internal politics and risk-averse models. FinTechs are often not weighed down by these regimented structures, enabling them nimbly to pivot, adapt and adjust compliance in line with regulation shifts and technological innovation.”

The Zing pause should be a wake-up call for traditional banks: digital transformation isn’t about mimicking FinTech aesthetics — it’s about embedding agility into the DNA of operations, culture, and compliance. Until then, every slickly branded experiment may just be another expensive lesson in what not to do.

Because in this race, it’s not the strongest that survive — it’s the fastest. And culture eats compliance for breakfast.