Corporate Venture Building
On January 30, 2025, HSBC announced that Zing — its bold attempt to capture the millennial and Gen Z banking market — would close its doors by May. With over $150 million spent and years of development, Zing was supposed to rival fintech leaders like Revolut, Wise, and Monzo. Instead, it struggled to gain traction and became yet another cautionary tale in corporate innovation.
What went wrong? And more importantly, what can corporates learn from Zing’s failure?
We believe that corporates can, and must, innovate to stay relevant. However innovation efforts often fall prey to slow decision-making, misaligned goals, and a reliance on outdated methods. Zing’s story provides invaluable insights into how corporates can approach innovation more effectively.
The Zing Vision: Why It Sounded Great on Paper
Zing was ambitious. HSBC set out to build a digital-first banking platform that would resonate with younger customers — an audience that traditional banks have often struggled to reach. Its features included gamified budgeting tools, personalized spending insights, and social elements like shared goals. In theory, it was perfectly tailored for a generation that prizes simplicity, control, and transparency.
But ambition alone isn’t enough. For innovation to succeed, bold ideas must be paired with lean execution, constant feedback loops, and a willingness to adapt. Zing fell short in these areas, and the result was a costly failure.
1. The $150 Million Question: Why Spending Big Without Validation Backfires
Spending $150 million before a full product launch is staggering, especially when startups like Wise and Revolut built early traction on far smaller budgets. Wise raised just $1.3 million in its first round, proving its concept with real customers before scaling. By contrast, Zing poured millions into development without testing whether its ideas resonated in the real world. So where did all the money go?
Over-Engineering and Internal Costs
Unlike startups, corporates like HSBC operate under strict regulatory environments and legacy systems. While compliance and security are essential, HSBC appears to have over-engineered these aspects, focusing more on infrastructure than customer-facing features. As a result, Zing became a costly technical exercise rather than an agile product rollout.
Heavy Investment in Branding and Research
HSBC reportedly invested heavily in branding and market research for Zing, conducting focus groups and building detailed customer personas. But there’s a catch: focus groups often don’t translate into real-world behavior. What customers say they’ll pay for in a survey can differ dramatically from what they actually use.
Corporate Bureaucracy
The layers of decision-making within a global bank like HSBC undoubtedly contributed to delays and inflated costs. Unlike startups, where decisions can be made quickly by small teams, Zing likely faced endless rounds of approvals, increasing its burn rate without moving the product forward.
The Lesson:
Corporate innovators need to start small and validate early. Instead of building a fully-fledged product, Zing could have launched a bare-bones MVP (minimum viable product) to test its ideas in-market. Leaner execution would have saved time, money, and resources while providing invaluable real-world feedback.
2. The Three-Year Odyssey: When Slow Execution Becomes a Liability
In fintech, speed matters. Startups like Wise and Revolut thrive because they launch quickly, gather user feedback, and iterate on the go. Zing, by contrast, took nearly three years to launch — a lifetime in the fast-moving digital banking space.
Complexity as the Enemy of Progress
HSBC’s vision for Zing was ambitious, but ambition can be a double-edged sword. By trying to launch a product with gamification, budgeting tools, social features, and personalized spending insights, Zing’s development became unwieldy. Instead of focusing on one core feature and building from there, HSBC tried to do too much at once.
Corporate Red Tape
Large organizations like HSBC are not built for agility. Every decision — whether it’s hiring a team, approving a budget, or launching a new feature — must go through layers of approvals. While startups can pivot within weeks, Zing was likely stuck in endless rounds of deliberation.
Missed Opportunities in a Dynamic Market
During Zing’s three-year development cycle, competitors like Revolut and Monzo were already shipping new features and expanding their market share. By the time Zing launched, it was already behind the curve, trying to catch up to competitors who had set the standard for digital banking experiences.
The Lesson:
Speed is essential in corporate innovation. Launching quickly — even with a limited feature set — allows you to test the market and stay competitive. Corporates must adopt lean, agile processes to reduce red tape and get products into customers’ hands faster.
3. Misalignment with HSBC’s Core Strategy: The Culture Clash
Zing’s struggles also highlight a deeper issue: its misalignment with HSBC’s broader strategy and culture.
Conflicting Objectives
HSBC’s core business focuses on stability, compliance, and risk management. Zing, by contrast, aimed to disrupt the digital banking space with agility and innovation. This fundamental disconnect likely led to resource conflicts and insufficient internal support.
Cultural Inertia
Corporate cultures often resist change. Even with the best intentions, it’s difficult for a large, risk-averse organization to embrace the speed, risk-taking, and iterative approach required to succeed in fintech.
Missed Opportunities for Integration
As a global bank, HSBC has extensive resources — existing customers, deep industry expertise, and a strong brand. Zing failed to fully leverage these strengths, operating too independently to benefit from HSBC’s advantages while being too connected to escape its bureaucratic limitations.
The Lesson:
Innovation efforts must either align closely with the parent company’s strengths or operate independently. Corporates need to decide whether to fully integrate new ventures or give them autonomy to act like startups. A hybrid approach often leads to confusion and inefficiency.
4. How Corporates Can Innovate Successfully: Five Key Lessons
The story of Zing offers clear lessons for corporate innovators:
- Start Small, Scale Fast: Don’t over-invest before validating your idea. Launch an MVP and iterate based on real user feedback.
- Prioritize Speed: Adopt lean governance models to reduce red tape and bring products to market faster.
- Focus on One Thing First: Avoid over-complicating your initial product. Nail one core feature before adding more.
- Separate or Align: Either fully integrate your venture with your core strategy or give it autonomy to operate like a startup.
- Let Customers Guide You: Replace assumptions with real-world testing. Use customer behavior — not focus groups — as your north star.
Conclusion: A New Blueprint for Corporate Innovation
Zing’s failure isn’t just HSBC’s problem — it’s a wake-up call for corporates everywhere. Deep pockets and bold ideas aren’t enough to succeed in today’s fast-moving markets. Innovation requires speed, focus, and an unwavering commitment to the customer.
The good news? Corporates have unique advantages — resources, expertise, and established networks. If they can pair these strengths with startup-like agility, they can out-innovate the disruptors.
The real question is: are corporates ready to do what it takes? At Wright Partners and MING Labs we lead our corporate partners on this journey, building lean, effective venture with early revenue, clear path to profitability and sizable sclae potential. Reach out to learn more.
Writer:
Sebastian Mueller — Founding Partner, MING Labs
Ziv Ragowsky — Founding Partner, Wright Partners
We are pleased to be an appointed venture studio of EDB’s Corporate Venture Launchpad 3.0 — a corporate venturing programme by EDB New Ventures, designed to empower companies to drive deeper innovation through venture creation and startup partnerships.
You can also find out more on our website.
