Inside OTP Bank’s Story-First Approach to Mobile Customer Experience

OTP Bank, a leading international banking group with a presence across Europe, is committed to providing its customers with a seamless and informative banking experience. However, effectively communicating with a diverse customer base and fostering trust in a competitive market presented significant challenges.

TL;DR

OTP Bank introduced in-app stories to improve customer communication, drive product awareness, and collect feedback in an engaging format. By combining education, product onboarding, lifestyle content, and interactive polls, the bank created a high-performing digital channel that earned over 2 million monthly views and reached a 70% engagement rate. This strategy helped OTP build trust, increase product adoption, and strengthen its mobile channel in a competitive financial market.

What Was the Challenge?

OTP Bank is a leading international banking group operating across Europe. Despite its reputation and wide product portfolio, the bank faced several communication hurdles:

• Educating a Diverse Customer Base: OTP Bank boasts a wide range of financial products and services catering to various needs, from basic checking accounts to complex investment opportunities. Simplifying this information and presenting it in a digestible way for customers with varying financial literacy levels is essential.
• Building Trust in a Competitive Market: One of the primary challenges OTP Bank faces is establishing trust with customers in markets where local competitors are already well-established. This requires OTP Bank to effectively communicate its reliability and expertise in the financial sector to win over customers who may have longstanding relationships with other banks.
• Maintaining Consistent Day-to-Day Communication: Customers are bombarded with information daily. OTP Bank needs to find ways to cut through the noise and deliver critical information about account updates, fraud alerts, and new offerings in a way that is timely, relevant, and engaging. 

What Was Done

OTP launched a multi-purpose content strategy using in-app stories, blending clear utility with human-centered storytelling.

Onboarding and Feature Education

Stories were used to create short, visual guides for the mobile app. These explained how to:

• Transfer money and check balances
• Navigate premium services and cashbacks
• Discover savings and investment tools

This helped reduce support queries and improved overall feature adoption.

Trust-Building Content

The bank published a series of stories that translated complex financial concepts like fees, interest, or inflation into simple, easy-to-understand visuals. These educational stories positioned OTP as an expert and transparent provider, reinforcing credibility in new and competitive markets.

Product Promotion

Stories were used to onboard users to new services, including:

• Cashback debit cards
• Premium account benefits
• Seasonal offers and credit options

By showing both how a service works and why it’s valuable, OTP drove qualified interest without relying on hard-sell tactics.

Lifestyle Content and Contests

The team introduced lifestyle-driven stories: budgeting tips, savings goals, and even contests with real prizes. These humanized the brand and added an emotional layer to the user experience.

Interactive Feedback & Insights

OTP used polls, quizzes, and feedback sliders directly inside stories to:

• Measure product understanding
• Test campaign concepts
• Capture preferences for future updates

This interactive layer turned stories into a two-way communication tool, with zero-party data feeding back into product and marketing strategies.

Results

The in-app Stories strategy delivered measurable, ongoing impact:

• 2M+ monthly Story views: Users showed consistent interest in content, proving the channel’s relevance.
• Up to 70% engagement rate: The majority of viewers interacted with Stories, demonstrating both quality and stickiness.
• 7% CTR on educational Stories: Content focused on product how-tos generated high conversion into further app activity.

This performance positioned Stories as a reliable tool to support daily communication, enhance product awareness, and reinforce customer loyalty.
 

What You Can Learn from OTP Bank

• Modular storytelling formats like stories help financial institutions speak clearly to different audience segments, especially when products are complex.
• Mixing educational, promotional, and lifestyle content builds stronger app retention than static or one-dimensional content alone.
• Interactive story elements not only boost engagement but also serve as cost-effective tools for customer research.
• When stories are fully integrated into a mobile banking app, they act as a service layer that informs, supports, and activates users at scale.