Digital 100 Financial Services Winner: Synchrony

Buy Now Pay Later and alternative financing services saw great gains

With 2022 traffic growth that topped 3,000%, Synchrony is the #1 Financial Services company in the Digital 100. The company offers merchants private label credit cards and alternative financing products, including Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services.

Financial Services is one of 10 key categories that make up the annual Similarweb Digital 100 ranking of the fastest-growing companies on the web. The ranking is based on desktop and mobile web traffic from the United States (see also the reports for the U.K., Germany, France, and Japan, with one for Australia to follow.

Key takeaways

• BNPL credit experienced major growth as a way for consumers to stretch their budgets. BNPL was part of the story of Synchrony’s success, and other BNPL players who made the top 10 included Uplift (up 139.7%) and Zip (up 127.5%).
• Adventurous uses of money still draw traffic. NovaTech, a foreign exchange and cryptocurrency trading platform, turned up at #2 on the list, despite the current decline in enthusiasm for crypto, up 518.4%.
• Referrals are key. Second only to direct traffic (50.8%), referrals drove 31.4% of the traffic to the fastest-growing finance sites. Synchrony brought in the most traffic across the direct, search, referral, and social channels, and ranked second for display advertising traffic.

The biggest Digital 100 theme is what we’re calling “The Year of the Cost-Conscious Consumer,” and financial services was one of the areas where we saw consumers looking for ways to stretch and continue to make purchases at a time of elevated inflation and budget sensitivity.

Somewhat bucking the trend toward economizing was NovaTech, at #2 with 518% growth for a site specializing in foreign and exchange and cryptocurrency trading – relatively adventurous uses of money – although right behind it was treasurydirect.gov, the official U.S. government website for buying and trading bonds, a more conservative investment.

The Mohela servicer of federal student aid also made it into the top 10, likely because of President Biden’s program aimed at forgiving student loans – a plan currently tied up in court challenges. 

The Digital 100 Financial Services Top 10

When we looked at search traffic driving visits to these sites, Mohela, Treasury Direct, Uplift, and Zip were among the top banded search results (meaning web searchers were searching for them by name rather than entering more generic search terms).

More from the Digital 100

For more details, visit the Similarweb Insights blog for posts on individual categories. A series of infographics are also available for the media and use on social media.

Eligibility criteria: The rankings are based on industry categories Similarweb tracks on an ongoing basis, ranked based on year-over-year change in their total traffic for 2022 over 2021. To qualify for the U.S. ranking, a domain had to average at least 100,000 monthly views for 2022 and 50,000 for 2021. Domains that had no measurable traffic at the beginning of 2021 were also eliminated.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Contact: For more information, please write to press@similarweb.com.

Citation:  Please refer to Similarweb as a digital intelligence platform. If online, please link back to www.similarweb.com or the most relevant blog post.

Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

Disclaimer: All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".