What breaks in India's banking apps: 197 Play Store reviews, read and coded
23.4% of Play Store reviews on India's top banking apps describe a malfunction, twice the average. Crashes and OTP failures lead. What to test first.
In this article
Banking apps have the hardest job on a phone. They bind themselves to a SIM, ask for an MPIN or a fingerprint, move real money, and update often to keep up with security rules. They also get some of the harshest reviews.
In our India App Quality Report, we read every review Google Play showed on the store pages of 11 of India's most-used banking apps on 23 October 2026: 197 reviews in English, Hindi and four regional languages. Here is what they say is broken, and what to test first if you ship a banking app.
The headline: 1 in 4 reviews describes a broken app
23.4% of banking storefront reviews describe the app malfunctioning (46 of 197; 95% range 18–29.7%). That's more than twice the 10.7% across all 187 apps in the report.
- 10 of the 11 apps had at least one malfunction review on show.
- 65.7% of complaints are about the software itself. Only 24.3% are about service, fees, support or delivery. In most other categories it's the other way round.
- 6 malfunction reviews say the problem started after an update, more than in any other category.
- The median app had last updated 25 days earlier, and 36.4% of release notes said only "bug fixes and improvements".
What breaks
| Malfunction | Banking | All 187 apps |
|---|---|---|
| Crashes, freezes, won't open | 8.1% | 2.3% |
| Login and OTP failures | 7.1% | 1.8% |
| Slow or laggy | 4.1% | 0.9% |
| A feature doesn't work | 3.0% | 3.3% |
| Payment and UPI failures | 0.5% | 1.4% |
| Wrong or stale data | 0.5% | 1.0% |
Share of each category's storefront reviews that describe each kind of malfunction.
Two things stand out. Crashes run at 3.5 times the average, and login and OTP failures at nearly 4 times, the highest of any category. Failed payments, which you might expect to lead, are rare on banking storefronts. In our data they show up mostly in travel, lending and food apps, where the payment sits inside a booking or an order.
Why banking apps break where they do
Login is a chain, and every link can fail. A banking login can involve device binding to a SIM, an SMS sent from the phone, an MPIN, a fingerprint, and a server check. Each step behaves differently across phone makers, Android builds and dual-SIM setups. If the bank-registered number sits in slot 2 while data runs on slot 1, binding can pick the wrong slot.
Security checks can misfire on phones nobody tested. Root detection, screenshot blocking and app-integrity checks run at launch. When one misfires on a particular maker's Android build, the user sees the app close on open.
Updates are frequent and the first launch is fragile. Banks ship often, and the first launch after an update has to migrate settings, refresh the binding and sometimes re-ask for permissions. That's where the "started after the update" reviews come from.
What the storefronts showed
A snapshot of the 11 apps on 23 October 2026:
| App | Rating | Reviews read | Malfunction reviews | Main problem |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Union Bank of India | 3.6★ | 18 | 11 | Crashes, won't open |
| bob World | 4.3★ | 18 | 7 | Login and OTP |
| HDFC Bank | 4.6★ | 17 | 5 | Login and OTP |
| PNB ONE | 4.3★ | 18 | 5 | Slow or laggy |
| Axis Mobile | 4.8★ | 18 | 4 | Login and OTP |
| Canara ai1 | 4.4★ | 18 | 4 | Crashes |
| FedMobile | 4.5★ | 18 | 3 | Login and OTP |
| Kotak811 | 4.7★ | 18 | 3 | Wrong or stale data |
| YONO SBI | 4.2★ | 18 | 3 | A feature doesn't work |
| ICICI iMobile Pay | 4.6★ | 18 | 1 | Login and OTP |
| IDFC FIRST Bank | 4.9★ | 18 | 0 | – |
These are small samples of what each storefront showed on one day, and Google changes which reviews it shows. Read them as a snapshot, not a verdict on any bank. The pattern holds, though: for five of the ten apps with malfunction reviews, the top problem is logging in.
What to test first in a banking app
- The first launch after an update. Upgrade from the previous store version, not a clean install, on a budget Android and an iPhone. Check that the binding, MPIN and biometrics survive.
- Login, MPIN and SIM binding on dual-SIM phones. Put the registered number in slot 2 and data on slot 1, then swap. Remove the SIM and restart. The OTP login cases cover this.
- Fingerprint and face unlock. A failed scan, the fallback to MPIN, and what happens after a new fingerprint is added in Settings. See the biometric login cases.
- Transfers end to end. Add a beneficiary, transfer, and drop the network right after confirming. The user should see Pending, never Failed while the money has left. See the fund transfer cases.
- Launch on low-memory phones with the maker's battery saver on. That's where security checks and heavy home screens crash first.
What it costs to check a banking release
A typical banking release check covers OTP login, biometric login, fund transfer, UPI payment and app update: 51 release-blocking cases. On Android and iOS that comes to ₹69,998 + GST per release with 99tests. A smaller release that only touches a couple of flows can run their P1 cases for ₹18,999 per platform. The banking app cost page shows the breakdown.
Check your own app
Read the full banking breakdown, or scan your own app's reviews with the free Play Store bug scanner to see how it compares. When you're ready to test, 99tests testers run your cases on the phones they own, on their own SIMs, with a verified report in 3 business days.
