SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—Credit unions and banks may be celebrating rising digital adoption, but new research suggests they are simultaneously losing a staggering number of potential new members and customers before relationships ever begin.
According to Cornerstone Advisors' 2026 Digital Banking Performance Metrics report, financial institutions lost an average of 3.36 digital checking account applications for every one successfully completed in 2025, a level of abandonment that translated into nearly 9,000 missed checking accounts per institution. The findings suggest that despite years of investment in digital transformation, onboarding—not adoption—may be the industry's biggest digital weakness.
According to the report, for every checking account opened digitally in 2025, financial institutions lost an average of 3.36 applications to abandonment. In fact, institutions at the 75th percentile are losing more accounts to abandonment than they are completing, a finding that points to a significant disconnect between digital investment and digital execution.
The report, commissioned by Alkami and authored by Elizabeth Gujral, director at Cornerstone Advisors, senior consultant Emily Osburn and Ron Shevlin, Cornerstone's chief research officer, is based on data from 89 financial institutions, including 57 credit unions and 32 banks. The study benchmarks digital banking performance across dozens of categories, ranging from account opening and lending to payments, support channels and business banking.
The abandonment numbers stood out because they reveal how much growth institutions are leaving on the table. According to the report, if no digital account openings were abandoned, financial institutions would have gained nearly 9,000 additional checking accounts per institution on average in 2025. The report estimates institutions missed 8,904 potential accounts due to abandonment, only slightly below the 9,572 missed accounts reported in 2024.
Cornerstone argues the issue is not marketing but experience design.
"The math on abandonment is unfortunate. At the 75th percentile, institutions are losing more prospective customers than they're converting, which means digital account opening is functioning more as a filter than a funnel," the report states. "The most common culprits are identity verification friction and mid-flow device switching, where applications must be restarted."
The findings are particularly notable because institutions are making measurable progress in digital adoption elsewhere. Active digital banking users reached 87% of checking accounts in 2025, up from 85% a year earlier. Mobile banking engagement also surged, with 82% of mobile banking users classified as active, compared to 73% in 2024. Researchers said the data confirms that mobile banking has become the primary channel through which consumers manage their financial lives.
"The implication is straightforward: Users who download a mobile banking application are increasingly likely to use it," the report notes. "Combined with the login frequency data, this points to mobile cementing its place not just as a secondary channel, but as the primary way members and customers manage their financial lives."
Digital lending is also gaining momentum. The report found digital consumer loan applications rose to 51% of all consumer loan applications in 2025, the highest level recorded in the study's history. Digital checking account openings increased as well, rising from 21% of total checking account openings in 2024 to 27% in 2025. Yet those gains are being offset by onboarding friction that continues to derail applications before they can be completed.
Another noteworthy finding involves the continuing shift away from institution-owned payment ecosystems. Person-to-person payment adoption fell sharply, declining from 24% of digital banking users in 2024 to just 15% in 2025. Cornerstone attributes the trend to consumers increasingly preferring Venmo, Cash App and similar platforms over bank-embedded solutions.
"The drop reflects something more fundamental about consumer behavior: consumers have chosen their P2P platform, and for a growing share of them, it isn't their bank or credit union," the report states. "Venmo, Cash App, and similar apps are winning the P2P relationship. A bank-embedded Zelle transaction is functional. A Venmo transaction is where their customers or members actually live."
At the same time, institutions are seeing stronger adoption of mobile wallets. Mobile payment usage doubled from 19% in 2024 to 38% in 2025, while the average number of monthly transactions climbed from roughly six per month to more than nine. The figures suggest consumers may be moving away from institution-controlled payment experiences while embracing institution-issued cards inside third-party digital ecosystems.
The report also highlights the growing role of artificial intelligence in member support. Monthly chatbot sessions increased 54% year-over-year, rising to 5,493 average sessions per month. Live chat interactions also climbed significantly. Yet most institutions remain cautious about allowing chatbots to perform transactions, with fewer than one-third deploying customer-facing transactional capabilities. Instead, chatbots are primarily handling informational requests and escalating more complex issues to human agents.
Perhaps the broader lesson from the study is that spending alone does not determine digital success. Average digital spending per $1 billion in assets increased slightly in 2025 to $589,634, but spending levels varied dramatically across institutions. The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile institutions approached three times, underscoring differing views on the strategic importance of digital channels.
Across seven editions of the report, the authors argue that the institutions benefiting most from digital benchmarking are those willing to challenge their own assumptions.
"Across seven editions, the consistent finding is that financial institutions who use this data well aren't the ones looking to confirm what they already believe," the authors wrote. "They're the ones willing to let the numbers challenge their assumptions. That's the point of benchmarking."