Competitive research for fintech

We study the apps winning your customers, and tell you how.

FOLIO is a competitive research firm for fintech. We send real users through your rivals' apps, find exactly where they beat you, and hand you the answer. You name the competitors. We do the work.

FOLIO's own Performance Index is a live sample of our work, on real African fintech apps.

Sample findingsLive
Onboarding8.4
KYC friction6.1
Transfer speed9.2
Rewards depth7.7
Your app vs field4.8
100K+Verified user panel
DoneFor you, not a tool to run
WeeklyFresh competitor studies
Endorsed byTechCabalInside Africa's first standardised payments-app ranking →
Why now

Your competitors run continuous research. You should too.

Fintechs win on product, faster flows, lower fees, and rewards built into every screen. They study each other constantly. The gap isn't knowing it's happening; it's having no standing way to see what they're doing or how you compare.

Public scrapers can't see it

The decisive detail lives behind the login wall: onboarding, KYC, funding, the reward offers surfaced in-flow. None of it is visible from the outside.

One-off audits go stale

The landscape shifts weekly. A competitor teardown from last quarter is already wrong. Intelligence has to be a function, not a project.

Hiring a team is slow

Standing up internal user research, a panel, and the tooling takes a year and real headcount, to reinvent something that already exists.

So you hire us to find out

A competitive research firm that does the work: we run the studies, analyze the results, and tell you where you're losing and what to change. The answers, without building a team to get them.

How it works

Real users. Real flows. Your competitors. Continuously.

You name the competitors and the question. We run the studies and deliver the answer. The same method behind FOLIO's public index, done for you.

01 — STUDY

We study your competitors

Real users record themselves onboarding, performing KYC, and transacting on the rival apps you name. We capture what happens behind the login wall.

02 — ANSWER

We tell you where you stand

You get findings, not raw data: exactly where competitors beat you, screen by screen, benchmarked against your own app, with what to fix first.

03 — REPEAT

We keep you current

Rivals ship changes constantly. We re-run studies and take new questions as they come up, so your team always has a current answer, not a stale snapshot.

What we do

Research engagements, sized to the question.

From a single competitor teardown to a standing research partnership. You buy answers, not a tool to run yourself.

Entry

Competitor Teardown

One-off study
  • A named competitor's full flow, studied end to end
  • Where they beat you, screen by screen, on video
  • Benchmarked against your own app
  • Clear findings and what to fix first
Core

Research Partnership

Ongoing
  • Continuous studies across your competitive set
  • New questions answered as they come up
  • Re-runs as rivals ship product changes
  • A standing research team without the headcount
For larger teams

Dedicated Function

Full engagement
  • We stand up and run your competitive research end to end
  • The panel, the analysis, the reporting, all operated by us
  • Custom user studies and switch-behavior polls
  • Findings confidential to your team
Live proof

See live samples of our work.

Our public Performance Index shows the kind of findings we deliver, running live on real African fintech apps. No login required.

Side-by-side rankings across five performance dimensions
UI pattern and friction-event breakdowns from real sessions
Feature, rewards, and retention parity across the field
The UX Advisor, trained on the session data, answers in plain language
The UX Analyzer audits any app screen against the benchmarked dataset
Performance Index · Payments20+ users / app
OPay46.6 /50
PalmPay44.2 /50
FairMoney42.1 /50
Carbon40.8 /50
Kuda39.5 /50
Get started

See the function running, then make it yours.

A 20-minute walkthrough of the live platform and a sample teardown of your app against your closest competitors, before any commitment.