Subscription banking has become a serious revenue line. Revolut's subscription revenue reached £708m in 2025, up 67% year on year and around 16% of group revenue, according to its 2025 annual report. Most customers already pay monthly for a phone plan, streaming and software. They just don't pay their bank. The question for a bank planning a paid tier is which of those habits it can absorb, and the answer is hiding in its transaction feed.
That question was at the heart of a recent episode of the 11:FS Fintech Insider podcast. Host Ross Gallagher, Head of Consulting at 11:FS, was joined on the panel by Joe Wilson, Chief Evangelist and Senior Strategist at bunq, and Lukáš Hora, Chief Sales Officer at Tapix.
What the panel discussed
- Why banks are moving from hidden fees to paid tiers, and why free banking was never really free
- What customers actually pay their bank for: features that remove friction
- How incumbents and challengers build their bundles
- Why trust, including recommending a cheaper tier when it fits better, keeps subscribers paying
- How payment data and life events tell a bank what a customer will need next
Listen to the full episode on 11:FS
Free banking was never free
Banks have always been paid for current accounts, just not openly. The money sat in overdraft charges, FX mark-ups, minimum balance rules and the margin on deposits, so the bank often earned most when the customer was under the most strain. As Joe put it during the episode: “Free banking was never free.”
A subscription changes who decides. The customer sees the price, chooses the tier and can leave it next month, so the fee only survives if it buys something the customer can feel. Joe described the point where it works as the moment “the value feels greater than the price”. That’s a higher bar than a hidden fee ever had to clear, and it’s why the design of the tier matters more than the price tag.
Behaviour-led vs portfolio-led
Whether a tier grows or stalls usually depends on where its design starts. Lukáš Hora, Chief Sales Officer at Tapix, described the incumbent pattern: the bank's existing portfolio decides what goes into the package, often as an extra for roughly the top 10% of its customers. Challengers start from the other end, with the expectations and day-to-day behaviour of the people using the app.
The bundles look different as a result. Many of bunq's customers live internationally, so its tiers carry things like an eSIM when you land in a new country and transfers without FX costs. The main point is that customers want "a bank that's built around their life, not a longer list of features", and that they pay for a feature when it removes an obstacle or a friction. A bigger top tier doesn't clear that bar on its own.
The weakness of portfolio-led design is that it rests on assumptions. What banks thought the customer wants isn't always what they actually want, and this gap shows up in the data. Incumbents aren't standing still either, some now tailor packages market by market rather than running one offer everywhere. The next step is tailoring to behaviour, and that starts with a clear read of what customers already spend on.
What the transaction feed shows before you price a tier
Before a bank prices a tier, its card and transfer data already shows which recurring services customers pay for, how often and how much. Survey data points the same way: in the Czech Republic, a 2026 Dynata survey for Revolut found that 82% of people hold at least one active subscription, most often mobile and internet plans, streaming, software and cloud storage. Revolut’s own payment data puts a number on it: its Czech users spent CZK 1.24bn on subscriptions in 2025, around CZK 4,900 per person.
A bank’s own feed answers the same question for its own customers, merchant by merchant, and card data is more precise than self-reporting. In our Czech data, around 40% of bank clients pay for at least one active subscription and one in four pays for two or more. Software and cloud storage account for more than half of all subscription payments. In Czechia alone, Tapix sees 750+ merchants with active subscriptions and more than 1,100 distinct subscription plans.
Reading these patterns well is harder than flagging Netflix. The same merchant can bill both one-off and recurring payments: an iCloud plan and a one-off app purchase can both cost €2.99 at Apple, and Prague’s public transport sells single tickets and annual passes through the same merchant. Annual and quarterly charges, such as an insurance policy or a motorway vignette, are easy to miss entirely. Recurring Payments Intelligence detects recurrence from real transaction behaviour across card, transfer and QR payments, which uncovers at least twice as many recurring merchants as digital-only service signals.
Learn more about Subscription labelling and its tagging system.
Life events sit in the same feed. A first mortgage payment, a new business account or a sudden rise in travel spend all signal a change in what a customer needs, often before they ask. A bank serving millions of customers has seen these sequences many times, and can anticipate the next step with reasonable confidence.
A subscription customers can't recognise is one they won't value
A tier built on recurring spend only works if the bank can see that spend clearly, and raw transaction data often hides it. A card payment can arrive as PAYPAL*SPOTIFY or GOOGLE*GSUITE CONNECT.CH. A Dutch direct debit for the regional newspaper De Gelderlander can arrive under the name of its publisher, DPG Media. Brands rename too: Discovery+ is now HBO Max, and a customer who still sees the old name may dispute a payment that was fine.
Each of these breaks something. The bank can't count the subscription towards a tier, can't show it in a subscription overview and can't explain it when the customer asks. Card payments enrichment resolves the merchant behind gateway strings like these, and A2A payments enrichment does the same for transfers and direct debits, so the feed reads Spotify, Google Workspace and De Gelderlander.
Did you know? Clean payment data categorisation groups merchants in a way a pricing team can actually use.
This is also where trust comes in, which Joe called one of the highest-value parts of the relationship. In a 2026 global study by Mastercard and Datos Insights, 77% of consumers said they want to manage all their recurring subscriptions in their primary banking app, and 39% said they’d consider switching banks for better subscription management tools. Few banks offer it yet: FinTech Insights by Scientia, which reviewed 245 digital banking firms in 2025 and 2026, found that only 8% of banks globally offer any kind of subscription feature. A customer who recognises every recurring charge is far more likely to trust the bank selling them a tier on top.
Keeping a paid tier worth paying for
Launching a tier is the easy part. Lukáš warned that a bundle’s pull fades unless the bank keeps adding services relevant to the people paying for it, and the transaction feed is where relevance shows. If a perk goes unused for months, or customers keep paying a third party for something the tier already includes, the bundle is not hitting its target.
The opposite is also an important point. The same Dynata survey for Revolut found that 42% of Czech respondents hold a subscription they barely use or don't use at all. The answer might be to recommend customers down a tier when they aren't using its features. They're surprised when it happens, and that surprise is the point.
Both moves depend on seeing usage over time. As Joe put it, data is a great place to start, but the relationship over time is even better, especially with customers who use you as their primary bank. Primary status is exactly what’s at stake: when recurring payments move to another provider, the main relationship tends to follow.
Building subscription banking on what customers already do
The banks that make subscription banking work won't be the ones with the longest list of perks. They'll be the ones that price a tier around what customers already do, keep it relevant as habits change and say so when it stops fitting. All three start with a transaction feed that identifies every recurring payment, whatever the payment type.
That's the layer Tapix provides. Recurring Payments Intelligence identifies subscriptions, direct debits, standing orders and pattern-based payments across card, transfer and QR data, and Tapix enriches transactions for 90+ banks and fintechs, including bunq. What a bank builds on top, from a subscription overview to its next premium tier, is its own call.
