Toss Bank’s 10% Savings Product Draws 300,000 Accounts in a Month

Toss Bank Sells 300,000 Savings Accounts With a ‘Pokemon-Style’ Game

Deep Finance

Why Toss’s 31-Day Savings Product Became a Hit

Drawing Interest With a ‘Raise a Squirrel’ Feature

Lowering the Bar With a $3.75-a-Day Savings Cap

For an internet-only bank with a smaller customer base than commercial lenders, selling more than 300,000 savings accounts is close to unheard of. Winning customer attention is difficult when higher-yield investment options are plentiful. Getting people to set aside cash consistently also requires constant motivation. That is why even special promotional products offering unusually high rates cannot guarantee a sellout.

Toss Bank is drawing attention after selling 300,000 accounts of a short-term, small-balance savings product in just one month. The low contribution amount and short savings period appear to have lowered the psychological barrier for customers. A game feature built around raising a squirrel character added an entertainment element that helped fuel demand.

According to the financial industry on Sept. 7, Toss Bank’s “Let’s Grow It: 31-Day Savings” recently surpassed 300,000 accounts sold. The product, launched on Aug. 6, is an ultra-short-term savings account that offers up to 10% annual interest if customers make a deposit every day for 31 days without missing one. Deposits are capped at 5,000 won, or about $3.75, a day, meaning the maximum balance at maturity is 155,000 won, or roughly $116. Even so, subscriptions have continued since the launch.

Hwang Ji-sun, product owner for deposits at Toss Bank, said the strategy succeeded because it lowered multiple hurdles, making the product easy to try even for people who had never used a savings account before. The bank aimed to move away from the conventional structure in which customers sign up, set up an automatic transfer and withdraw the funds at maturity. Instead, it focused on keeping customers engaged with the product throughout the term.

That is why the bank added a game feature in which each user’s squirrel character grows whenever money is deposited. Like evolving characters in the Japanese animation series Pokemon, the squirrel develops into more than 10 different forms depending on its type. Jang Seo-young, a deposit product designer at Toss Bank, said the goal was for the pleasant memory of opening the app to check on the squirrel to turn naturally into a savings habit. The short maturity period was also intended to show the squirrel’s changes before the experience became tedious.

Setting the total savings amount at 155,000 won, or about $116, was also part of a strategy to lower the entry barrier for first-time savers. Before developing the product, Toss Bank met customers directly and asked how much they could realistically afford to save. It found that many in its main target group of customers under 30 said they could not manage more than 5,000 won a day because their income was unstable. Jang said lowering the threshold for the savings amount mattered more than the size of the interest payment.

Toss Bank plans to keep expanding its customer base with products built around intuitive benefits. It previously attracted large numbers of users with simple but eye-catching structures, including “Get Interest Now,” which lets depositors choose when to receive interest, and “Dried Pollack Savings,” which offers the top rate if the account is maintained until maturity.

Toss Bank had about 16 million customers as of the end of August, up 80% from 8.88 million at the end of 2023. Hwang said the bank would continue to roll out products that make it easy for customers to meet conditions naturally and receive preferential rates.

Kim Jin-seong, Hankyung reporter jskim1028@hankyung.com