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FinHealth Standards for Spending Management Products: Checking Accounts and Credit Cards

Discover the first evidence-based standards for designing checking accounts and credit cards that support customer financial health.

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By MK Falgout, Heidi Johnson, Marisa Walster, Elvis Diaz, Angele Noel

Category:

Credit, Financial Services, Payments, Standards

Monday, June 2, 2025

FinHealth Standards for Spending Management Products: Checking Accounts and Credit Cards

The Challenge

Designing Checking and Credit Products To Help Consumers Manage Their Spending

Every day, people across the U.S. face significant financial strain. More than half (53%) of American households spent as much as or more than their income over the past year, and nearly a third (30%) reported falling behind on at least one bill payment.¹ Financial services providers have a vital role to play in helping consumers manage their finances, improving their financial health while also boosting customer satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value.²

As two of the most widely used financial tools, credit cards and checking accounts offer a helpful place to start. When designed with intention and empathy, they can aid customers in avoiding overdrafts, balance recurring expenses, and manage cash flow. But what do providers need to know to ensure their products truly support customer needs?

In the first publication from our FinHealth Standards initiative, this Industry Toolkit provides financial services providers with clear standards to transform checking accounts and credit cards into tools for positive impact.

Who Should Use This Toolkit?

We’ve designed this toolkit for banks, credit unions, and fintechs who are ready to embrace their role as architects of customer financial health. Product teams, marketers, and organizational leaders at these institutions can use the standards in a variety of ways – whether they’re improving an existing product or innovating a solution from the ground up. For example:

A large institution with internal engineering teams may integrate a dynamic balance forecasting tool into its app.

A smaller credit union may work with a core provider to activate existing features or explore new vendor partnerships.

A fintech may reimagine where its budget tool appears online or in-app, making it easier to find, understand, and use.

What You’ll Learn

The FinHealth Standards for Spending Management Products offers businesses a blueprint for advancing consumer financial health through thoughtful and inclusive account features, account policies, and onboarding and access.

Discover more than a dozen specific, actionable standards for credit cards and checking accounts.

Understand the financial health rationale for each of the standards.

Get inspiration from real businesses who are already using these standards.

Measure how your own solutions stack up with our product scorecards.

About the FinHealth Standards

This toolkit is part of the FinHealth Standards, a Financial Health Network initiative built on our two decades of expertise in shaping industry practices to support consumers’ financial lives. Grounded in rigorous research and deep collaboration, FinHealth Standards offer evidence-based guidance on building financial health solutions that improve outcomes across the key aspects of financial health: spending, saving, borrowing, and planning.

Learn About the Initiative

Endnotes

Andrew Warren, Wanjira Chege, Kennan Cepa, & Necati Celik, “Financial Health Pulse® 2024 U.S. Trends Report: Diverging Financial Health Indicators,” Financial Health Network, September 2024.
Marisa Walster, Nadia van de Walle & Stephen Arves, “Building Valuable Customer Relationships Through Financial Health,” Financial Health Network, August 2020.

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