Negative app store reviews blaming AI chatbots rose 55.49% year on year across Europe’s 10 most-used banking and payment apps, according to a new study by payment infrastructure company DECTA. The analysis covered 159,600 reviews across Revolut, N26, Wise, bunq, Monzo, Sumeria, Starling Bank, Bourso, Monese, and Chase UK, apps used by millions of consumers across Europe.
Of the 34,167 negative reviews analysed, those blaming a chatbot or AI assistant for an unresolved problem grew sharply year on year. The trend points to a widening gap between where AI customer service is deployed and what it can actually resolve.
Among classified chatbot-blame reviews, four problem types account for 57% of all complaints:
- Identity verification: 16.85%
- Declined transactions: 16.09%
- Login and access issues: 12.74%
- Account suspensions: 11.23%
These are not edge cases. They are the most common moments when something goes wrong in a banking app, and precisely the situations that require human judgement, account-level access, or real-time payment authorisation. The chatbot is deployed at exactly the point it is least equipped to help. A customer locked out of their account or staring at a declined payment does not need a scripted reply. They need someone who can see the account, understand the decision, and act on it.
The findings arrive as confidence in AI-first customer service is visibly retreating across the financial sector. Klarna, which replaced 700 customer service staff with AI, reversed course after satisfaction scores fell 22%. The EU AI Act now classifies AI systems used in creditworthiness assessments and financial services decisions as high-risk, requiring banks to document and justify automated decisions affecting consumers. A Forrester analysis projected that one in four AI deployments in financial services will be scaled back within two years as cost savings fail to materialise and customer satisfaction drops.
The pattern is consistent. Firms deploy chatbots to cut costs and deflect contact volume, then discover that the cases consumers most want resolved are the ones AI handles worst. The saving is real on paper, but it lands on the customer as a dead end, and increasingly that frustration ends up in a public review rather than a private support ticket.
DECTA’s app store data puts the consumer signal behind those headlines. A 55.49% year-on-year rise in chatbot-blame reviews is not noise. It is a measurable, public record of consumers attributing failure to the AI layer placed between them and a resolution. As regulatory pressure grows and the limits of automated support become clearer, the apps that fix this gap, rather than paper over it, will be the ones that hold on to their customers.
Full findings: https://www.decta.com/company/media/ai-in-banking-apps-a-study-on-blocked-payments-and-chatbot-failure
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