{"id":18769,"date":"2026-05-03T19:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finteqc.ca\/?post_type=finteqc_paper&#038;p=18769"},"modified":"2026-05-03T19:23:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:23:21","slug":"15960","status":"publish","type":"finteqc_paper","link":"https:\/\/finteqc.ca\/index.php\/papers\/15960\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paradox of Fintech Adoption in Canadian Banking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why do most Canadians continue banking with traditional institutions when fintech alternatives consistently generate higher user satisfaction? This paper investigates this satisfaction-adoption paradox in Canadian retail mobile banking. Analyzing 26,284 user reviews from twelve mobile banking applications using sentiment classification and a custom switching-cost dictionary grounded in Burnham et al.&#8217;s (2003) taxonomy, I find three key results. First, fintech users report significantly more positive experiences than users of traditional bank apps. Second, this satisfaction advantage has not translated into market share: the Big Six banks retain over 90% of personal deposits while fintechs hold roughly 13% of primary banking relationships. Third, negative reviews of traditional banks disproportionately contain constraint-related language (references to procedural friction, financial penalties, and relational lock-in), while fintech complaints focus on product-level issues. These patterns support a constrained choice interpretation: consumers are not staying with incumbents because they are satisfied, but because structural switching costs prevent them from acting on their preferences. The findings challenge narratives attributing low fintech adoption to consumer contentment, carrying direct implications for open banking policy and the Competition Bureau&#8217;s ongoing retail banking market study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-18769","finteqc_paper","type-finteqc_paper","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finteqc.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/finteqc_paper\/18769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finteqc.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/finteqc_paper"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finteqc.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/finteqc_paper"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finteqc.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}