A digital banking case study on how Trust Bank used referral programmes, real-time rewards, and AI-driven personalisation to drive customer acquisition, activation, and engagement at scale.
Case Study
How Trust Bank Scaled Digital Banking Customer Acquisition with Referrals and Personalisation
The Challenge
Scaling Customer Acquisition in Digital Banking
For new digital banks, customer acquisition is one of the biggest challenges, especially in competitive markets like Singapore.
Customers are digitally sophisticated, expectations are high, and the cost of acquiring them through paid channels is significant. For a new digital bank, the question was not just how to attract customers, but how to give them an immediate reason to activate, transact, and stay.
Trust Bank needed a solution that could deliver personalised, rewarding experiences from day one, and a referral programme capable of turning early customers into a genuine growth channel, without the operational complexity that typically makes these programmes difficult to scale.
The Solution
Referral Marketing and Personalised Digital Banking Experiences
Using Moneythor’s personalisation platform, Trust Bank launched a referral-led customer acquisition strategy combined with real-time rewards and personalised digital banking experiences.
Moneythor integrated directly into Trust Bank’s technology stack via APIs, enabling the bank to deploy personalisation and decisioning capabilities without a lengthy rebuild of core systems. Speed to market was critical, and the implementation was designed accordingly.
Two capabilities sat at the heart of the programme:
- Referral programme with real-time rewards and automated fulfilment: Moneythor powered in-app sharing of referral codes with automated tracking, communications, and instant reward delivery. New customers and their referrers received FairPrice E-vouchers immediately upon a successful referral, removing the friction that typically limits banking referral programme performance. The result was a programme that customers actually used and talked about.
- Personalised digital banking experiences to drive activation and engagement: Beyond acquisition, Moneythor enabled Trust Bank to deliver real-time spending insights, transaction categorisation, and contextual engagement that gave customers value from their very first interactions with the app. Activation was not left to chance. It was built into the experience.
Together these capabilities meant that every customer who joined through a referral had an immediate reason to engage, and every engaged customer had an incentive to bring others in.
The Results
Rapid Customer Acquisition and High Engagement in Digital Banking
The combination of referral marketing and personalised digital banking experiences enabled Trust Bank to scale customer acquisition while maintaining high levels of engagement and activation.
customers acquired since launch
market share captured
of new customers referred by friends or family
card activation rate
transactions per month on average
digital coupon redemptions
Client Story
“With support from Moneythor, we introduced real-time reward redemption, driving our groundbreaking referral programme and achieving a cost of acquisition that is lower than market averages. By offering instant FairPrice E-vouchers for successful referrals, we revolutionised customer engagement, with nearly 70% of new customers referred by friends or family.”
Nitin Bhargava
Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Trust Bank
About Trust Bank
Trust Bank is a digital bank headquartered in Singapore, launched in September 2022 as a partnership between Standard Chartered and FairPrice Group. Built mobile-first, it was designed from the outset to offer a simple, rewarding banking experience grounded in everyday value. Since launch it has grown to become one of the fastest-growing digital banks globally, capturing over 12% of Singapore’s retail banking market in under two years. Its app holds a 4.8 rating on the Apple App Store, reflecting a consistent focus on customer experience alongside commercial growth.
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