Banking giant HSBC has confirmed that it’s shutting its cross border payment app Zing, potentially leading to hundreds of job losses. The closure of Zing, which launched in January 2024, comes amid cost savings efforts by the banking giant.

The closure of Zing, one of the most hyped fintech launches of last year, will raise fresh questions about the ability of traditional banks to launch fintech offshoots. UK-focused Zing was launched to take on the likes of Wise and Revolut which have pinched customers from traditional rivals with lower FX fees.

 A HSBC spokesperson said:

“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.

“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).

“As part of our regular business reviews, we continuously evaluate how to align our resources with our strategic priorities. This includes considering changes to our business structure and entities.

“This decision forms part of the simplification of the group announced on 22 October 2024.

“HSBC is focused on increasing leadership and market share in the areas where it has a clear competitive advantage, and where it has the greatest opportunities to grow and support our clients.”

According to Reuters, Zing’s closure could lead to around 400 job losses, but HSBC did not confirm this. Staff working on Zing are being informed about the decision to close Zing down today. According to Financial News, which broke the news yesterday, the decision to close Zing also came amid a struggle to restructure Zing’s compliance functions.

HSBC’s new CEO Georges Elhedery is looking to take costs out of the HSBC business and focus on its core business. Last year, loyalty app Bink backed by Lloyds and Barclays closed leading to 46 redundancies. In 2021, NatWest axed Esme Loans, its standalone digital lending platform for SMEs.